GO TO LIST OF PEOPLE INVOLVED IN HARPERS FERRY

VARIOUS PERSONAGES INVOLVED

IN THE

FOMENTING OF RACE WAR (RATHER THAN CIVIL WAR)

IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

Richard Realf, English poet, was the son of a blacksmith who had become a rural constable. In 1852 he had published GUESSES AT THE BEAUTIFUL and in 1854, after giving up being the lover of George Gordon, Lord Byron’s aging widow Lady Noell Byron, he had been led to the United States of America by “instincts” he characterized as “democratic and republican, or, at least, anti-monarchical.” At the end of November or beginning of December 1857 he had been introduced to John Brown in Mount Tabor, Iowa by John Edwin Cook, whom he had met in Lawrence in “Bleeding Kansas” while working as a correspondent for the Illinois State Gazette. He traveled through Chicago and Detroit to Chatham, Ontario West, Canada and signed the “Provisional Constitution and Ordinances for the People of the United States,” per a document in Brown’s handwriting found when the survivors were subdued at Harpers Ferry on October 18th, 1859. By reading a book of ethical philosophy written by the President of Brown University, he determined that this violent agenda, and radical abolitionism in general, were a wrong path, and so he returned to England to lecture, and visited France. He embarked at Le Havre on March 2d, 1859, arriving at New Orleans on April 17th, 1959 with the intention of becoming a Jesuit priest, then with an aim to join the Shakers, and made no further contact with Captain Brown. After the raid he would voluntarily testify before the US Senate Committee and then enlist in a regiment of the Union Army. HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

THOSE INVOLVED, ARRANGED ALPHABETICALLY

SECRET “SIX”

Person’s Name On Raid? Shot Dead? Hanged? His Function Age Race

Charles Francis Adams, Sr. No No No Finance white

Charles Francis Adams, Sr. subscribed to the racist agenda of Eli Thayer’s and Amos Lawrence’s New England Emigrant Aid Company, for the creation of an Aryan Nation in the territory then well known as “Bleeding Kansas,” to the tune of $25,000.

Jeremiah Goldsmith Anderson Yes Yes Captain or Lt. 26 white HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

Person’s Name On Raid? Shot Dead? Hanged? His Function Age Race

The maternal grandfather of Jeremiah Goldsmith Anderson, Colonel Jacob Westfall of Tygert Valley, Virginia, had been a soldier in the revolution and a slaveholder. Jeremiah had gone to school at Galesburg, Illinois and Kossuth, Iowa and had worked as a peddler, farmer, and sawmill laborer before settling a mile from Fort Bain on the Little Osage in Bourbon County in “Bleeding Kansas” during August 1857. He had twice been arrested by proslavery activists, and had been held for 10 weeks at Fort Scott. He then became a lieutenant of Captain Montgomery and was with him in the attack on Captain Anderson’s troop of the 1st US Cavalry. He witnessed a murder, of a Mr. Denton, on his own doorstep by border ruffians. He went with John Brown on the slave raid into Missouri and remained with him thereafter. He was “J. Anderson” among the signatories to “Provisional Constitution and Ordinances for the People of the United States,” from a document in Brown’s handwriting that would be captured when he and his men were subdued at Harpers Ferry on October 18th, 1859. On July 5th, 1859 this 27-year-old had written of his determination to continue to fight for freedom: “Millions of fellow-beings require it of us; their cries for help go out to the universe daily and hourly. Whose duty is it to help them? Is it yours? Is it mine? It is every man’s, but how few there are to help. But there are a few who dare to answer this call and dare to answer it in a manner that will make this land of liberty and equality shake to the centre.” He was thrust through with a bayonet by one of the Marines, and pinned against the wall “vomiting gore.” A white man, he was tortured because he was perceived by the attackers as a light mulatto: “One of the prisoners described Anderson as turning completely over against the wall [to which he was pinned by the bayonet] in his dying agony. He lived a short time, stretched on the brick walk without, where he was subjected to savage brutalities, being kicked in body and face, while one brute of an armed farmer spat a huge quid of tobacco from his vile jaws into the mouth of the dying man, which he first forced open.” A local commented “Well, it takes you a hell of a long time to die.” When opportunistic medical students would go to transport the remains to their college in Winchester, Virginia for dissection, their treatment of this corpse was so casual as to be recorded by a bystander: “In order to take him away handily they procured a barrel and tried to pack him into it. Head foremost, they rammed him in, but they could not bend his legs so as to get them into the barrel with the rest of the body. In their endeavor to accomplish this feat, they strained so hard that the man’s bones or sinews fairly cracked.” His remains were taken to the college along with the remains of Watson Brown (a corpse found on the banks of the Shenandoah River was more likely that of a local slave).

John Anderson ? ? Private < 30 of color

John Anderson, a free black youth from Boston allegedly killed at Harpers Ferry. Nothing is known as to who he was, other than that he was young, or where he came from, other than from Boston — and it is even possible that actually there had been no such person as this in John Brown’s company. (The John Anderson we do know about had an entirely different life trajectory, in Canada.)

Osborn Perry Anderson Yes No No Private 29 of color HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

Person’s Name On Raid? Shot Dead? Hanged? His Function Age Race

Osborn Perry Anderson, “O.P. Anderson, or as we used to call him Chatham Anderson,” the only participant of color to survive Harpers Ferry and elude capture, had been born free on July 27, 1830 in West Fallowfield, Pennsylvania. He had learned the printing trade in Canada, where he had met John Brown in 1858. He was a member of Congress of John Brown’s Provisional Government in Chatham, Ontario in May 1858 and was “Osborn Anderson” on the list of signatories of the “Provisional Constitution and Ordinances for the People of the United States”; a member of the Vigilance Committee in Chatham and Windsor in September 1858. He would write later of the fight at Harpers Ferry and his escape in A VOICE FROM HARPER’S FERRY: “We were together eight days before [John Edwin Cook and Albert Hazlett were] captured, which was near Chambersburg, and the next night Meriam [Francis Jackson Meriam] left us and went to Shippensburg, and there took cars for Philadelphia. After that there were but three of us left [Brown’s son Owen Brown, Barclay Coppoc, and Charles Plummer Tidd], and we kept together, until we got to Centre County, Pennsylvania, where we bought a box and packed up all heavy luggage, such as rifles, blankets, etc., and after being together three or four weeks we separated….” Anderson, Coppoc, and Meriam had journeyed separately to safe exile in the area of St. Catharines, Canada. Anderson enlisted in the US Army in 1864, becoming a recruiter and/or noncommissioned officer for a unit as yet undetermined, and mustered out in Washington DC at the close of the war (he would be identified by his father Vincent Anderson in 1872 as having been a recruiter for the “western regiments”). He was a member of the Equal Rights League in 1865, and represented Michigan at the National Convention of Colored Men in 1869. He died a pauper of TB and lack of care in Washington on December 13, 1872.

John Albion Andrew No white

Despite the fact that John Albion Andrew was a prominent Massachusetts politician, Franklin Benjamin Sanborn of the Secret “Six” would indicate long after the raid on Harpers Ferry, John Brown’s “general purpose of attacking slavery by force, in Missouri or elsewhere, was known in 1857-8-9” to Governor Andrew.

Henry Ward Beecher No No No Propaganda white

The Reverend Henry Ward Beecher induced the congregation of his Plymouth Church to procure a crate of 25 rifles to ship illegally to “Bleeding Kansas” and to stamp upon that crate the term of art BIBLES. The Reverend’s personal attitude toward American blacks was that although those like Frederick Douglass whose blood had become partly mingled with the blood of whites were worthy of consideration as human beings, those who yet remained of pure African stock were still in such a “low animal condition” (his category, his words) of pure blackness that such consideration as human beings would be inappropriate.

Charles Blair No No No Armament white

Charles Blair supplied the pikes.

Ann Brown No No No Supporter white HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

Person’s Name On Raid? Shot Dead? Hanged? His Function Age Race

Ann Brown, a daughter of Captain John Brown, was with the conspirators at the Kennedy farm until shortly before the attack upon Harpers Ferry. In the aftermath she would move to the West Coast.

Frederick Brown No No No Supporter white

Frederick Brown was fanatically religious to the extent that he attempted to sever his sexual organs when he was attracted to a young lady. He would have been 28 at the time of the Harpers Ferry raid, but in 1856 had been killed in the fighting in “Bleeding Kansas.”

Jason Brown No No No Supporter 38 white

Jason Brown, one of the elder sons of Captain John Brown, was a gentle sort of person who actually was trying to become an inventor. He took part in the battle at Black Jack in “Bleeding Kansas,” and in the killings on the Osawatomie Creek, but was not at Harpers Ferry. He and his brother Owen Brown would become grape growers in the mountains above Pasadena, California.

John Brown Yes Multiple Yes Commander white wounds

John Brown, “Captain” John “Nelson Hawkins” “Shubel Morgan” “Isaac Smith” Brown.

John Brown, Jr. No No No Supporter 38 white

John Brown, Jr., 38 at the time of the Harpers Ferry raid and Captain John Brown’s eldest son, had trained as a phrenologist. After the raid he would go into hiding in Ohio and, when summoned to appear before the investigatory committee of the US Senate, would refuse to appear. During the Civil War he served as Captain of Company K of the 7th Kansas Cavalry. He and his family would then find permanent safe haven on South Bass Island in Lake Erie.

Martha Brewster Brown No No No Supporter white

Martha Brewster Brown, wife of Oliver Brown and daughter-in-law of Captain John Brown, was with the conspirators at the Kennedy farm until shortly before the attack upon Harpers Ferry.

Oliver Brown Yes Yes Captain 20 white HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

Person’s Name On Raid? Shot Dead? Hanged? His Function Age Race

Oliver Brown, the youngest of John Brown’s sons to reach adulthood, had been born in Franklin, Ohio on March 9, 1839. He was a bookish lad, considered by his mother Mary Ann Day Brown to be the most promising. He went to “Bleeding Kansas” in 1855 with his father and returned to North Elba during October 1856, where he got married with Martha E. Brewster in 1858. She was sent back north just before the raid on Harpers Ferry. “I think there is no good reason why any of us should be discouraged,” he had written his family, “for if we have done but one good act, life is not a failure.... Keep a stiff lip, a sound pluck, and believe that all will come out right in the end.” He had reached the age of 20 when he was shot while serving as a sentinel at the river bridge. His body was dumped into a shallow hole on the bank of the Shenandoah River, with the bodies of other fighters.

Owen Brown Yes No No Captain 35 white

Owen Brown, 3d of John Brown’s sons and his stalwart aid both in “Bleeding Kansas” and at Harper’s Ferry, was born November 4, 1824 at Hudson, Ohio. With a withered arm, he had been attempting to make a career of writing humor articles for newspapers. His name was among the signatories to “Provisional Constitution and Ordinances for the People of the United States,” from a document in Brown’s handwriting that would be captured when he and his men were subdued at Harpers Ferry on October 18, 1859. He was 35 at the time of the Harpers Ferry raid. He escaped on foot toward the northwestern part of Pennsylvania. It was due largely to his psychological grit and his endurance that the little group of survivors of which he was the leader managed to make it out. He and Charles Plummer Tidd found work and safety under assumed names on an oil-well crew in Crawford County, Pennsylvania. He was the only one of the 5 escaped raiders not to participate in the civil war. He would never marry. He would grow grapes for some time in Ohio in association with 2 of his brothers, and then migrate west, and would be the final survivor of the raiders when he would die on January 9, 1891 at his mountain home “Brown’s Peak” near Pasadena, California. A marble monument marked the mountain grave, until during July 2002 it mysteriously disappeared — since the grave was not a registered historical landmark, and not in a cemetery, there would be no investigation.

Salmon Brown No 23 white

Salmon Brown, 23 at the time of the Harpers Ferry raid, was said to have been exactly like his father, Captain John Brown, in every particular. He would once comment to a newspaper reporter that “The tannery business, farming, wool buying and the raising of blooded stock were my father’s life occupations, though all of them were subordinated to his one consuming passion — freeing the slaves.” Salmon would die in Portland, Oregon in 1919.

Watson Brown Yes Yes Captain 24 white HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

Person’s Name On Raid? Shot Dead? Hanged? His Function Age Race

Watson Brown, born at Franklin, Ohio on October 7, 1835, got married with young Isabella M. Thompson during September 1856. “Dear Belle,” he had written to his child-wife, “I would gladly come home and stay with you always but for the cause which brought me here — a desire to do something for others, and not live wholly for my own happiness.... I sometimes feel as if I could not make this sacrifice, but what would I not want others to do were I in their place?” Their son would live only to his 5th year but would nevertheless survive his father, because he was sent out with a white flag by his father John Brown to parley and was gut-shot by the citizens of Harpers Ferry. He managed to crawl back to the shelter of the engine house and live on, groaning, his head cradled in Edwin Coppoc’s lap, for a longish period. When one of his captors asked “What brought you here?” he responded “Duty, sir.” The corpse would be sent for the instruction of students at the medical college in Winchester, Virginia. Recovering the skeleton from this college during the Civil War, his mother Mary Ann Day Brown eventually would be able to rebury it in the Adirondacks, before heading off to her retirement in California.

John E. Cook Yes No Yes Captain 29 white

John Edwin Cook, a well-connected 5'7" gentleman with blue eyes and long, curly blond hair, born during Summer 1830 to a well-to-do family in Haddam, Connecticut, had been a law clerk in Brooklyn and Manhattan after being expelled from Yale College on account of some student indiscretion, and had in 1855 become a member of the guerrilla force operated out of Lawrence in “Bleeding Kansas” by Charles Lenhart and had made himself an excellent shot. The name “John E. Cook” was among the signatories to “Provisional Constitution and Ordinances for the People of the United States,” from a document in Brown’s handwriting that would be captured when he and his men were subdued at Harpers Ferry on October 18th, 1859. He had been dispatched by John Brown to Harpers Ferry more than a year before the raid to work out the details on the ground and had secured employment as a lock tender on the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal, as a schoolteacher, and as a bookseller. He had gotten married with a Chambersburg, Pennsylvania woman, Mary V. Kennedy, on April 18th, 1859. After being sent out by Captain Brown to collect weapons, and having escaped by climbing into a tree and watching the events transpire, and after having evaded capture for some months, against the advice of his comrades he became reckless in his search for food and was captured on October 25th, 8 miles from Chambersburg. As an incessant and compulsive communicator he had always been considered by the Brown operatives to be indiscreet. In a confession which would be published as a pamphlet at Charles Town in the middle of November 1859 for the benefit of Samuel C. Young, a man who had been crippled for life in the fighting, Cook would detail for his captors all his movements from the point of his 1st meeting with Brown after the battle of Black Jack in June 1856 until after his capture. At the last moment he would seek to save himself by representing that he had been deceived through false promises. For this revelation Cook would be severely censured at the time, being termed “Judas.” Despite his confession, and despite his brother-in-law A.P. Willard being the governor of Indiana, he would in the end, one of the last, be also hanged for treason and murder at Harpers Ferry, on December 16th.

John Anderson Copeland, Jr. Yes No Yes Private < 30 of color HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

Person’s Name On Raid? Shot Dead? Hanged? His Function Age Race

John Anderson Copeland, Jr. was an Oberlin, Ohio carpenter and freeborn black American who was the son of a slave. He was active in the Oberlin Anti-Slavery Society. It was rumored that he escorted John Price to Canada after the Oberlin-Wellington Rescue. Copeland later participated in the raid on the Harpers Ferry armory with John Brown. He got trapped in “Hall’s Rifle Works” along with his uncle Lewis Sheridan Leary and John Henry Kagi. When the 3 made a run for the Shenandoah River they got caught in a crossfire, but after Kagi had been killed and Leary had been shot several times and placed under arrest, Copeland was able to surrender without having been wounded. He refused to speak during his trial and was hanged with too short a drop and thus strangled slowly. On December 29, when a crowd of 3,000 would attend his funeral in his hometown of Oberlin, Ohio, there would be no body to bury, for after his cadaver had been temporarily interred in Charles Town it had been dug up and was in service in the instruction of students at the medical college in Winchester, Virginia. A monument was erected by the citizens of Oberlin in honor of their three fallen free citizens of color, Copeland, Leary, and Shields Green (the 8-foot marble monument would be moved to Vine Street Park in 1971). Judge Parker would assert in his story of the trials (St. Louis Globe Democrat, April 8, 1888) that Copeland had been “the prisoner who impressed me best. He was a free negro. He had been educated, and there was a dignity about him that I could not help liking. He was always manly.” Andrew Hunter at the same time was quoted as saying– “Copeland was the cleverest of all the prisoners ... and behaved better than any of them. If I had had the power and could have concluded to pardon any man among them, he was the man I would have picked out.” On the day that he died Copeland declared, “If I am dying for freedom, I could not die for a better cause — I had rather die than be a slave!” (Paul Finkelman avers on page 49 of HIS SOUL GOES MARCHING ON: RESPONSES TO JOHN BROWN AND THE HARPERS FERRY RAID that his middle name was “Anthony” rather than “Anderson.”)

Barclay Coppoc Yes No No Private < 21 white

Barclay Coppoc, from the Quaker settlement of Springdale, Iowa, was born in Salem, Ohio on January 4, 1839, and had not attained his majority at the time of the raid on Harpers Ferry. This Quaker escaped, although his adopted brother Edwin Coppoc surrendered and was tried and hanged. “We were together eight days before [John Edwin Cook and Albert Hazlett were] captured, which was near Chambersburg, and the next night Meriam [Francis Jackson Meriam] left us and went to Shippensburg, and there took cars for Philadelphia. After that there were but three of us left [John Brown’s son Owen Brown, Barclay Coppoc, and Charles Plummer Tidd], and we kept together, until we got to Centre County, Pennsylvania, where we bought a box and packed up all heavy luggage, such as rifles, blankets, etc., and after being together three or four weeks we separated and I went on through with the box to Ohio on the cars.” Osborn Perry Anderson, Barclay Coppoc, and Francis Jackson Meriam would travel separately to safe exile in the area of St. Catharines, Canada. Barclay then went to his family home in Iowa, with Virginia agents in close pursuit. There a band of young men armed themselves to defend him, and the Religious Society of Friends disowned him for bearing arms. He was back in “Bleeding Kansas” in 1860, helping to run off some Missouri slaves, and nearly lost his life in a second undertaking of this kind. He became a 1st Lieutenant in Colonel Montgomery’s regiment, the 3d Kansas Infantry. Soon he was killed by the fall of a train into the Platte river from a trestle 40 feet high, the supports of which had been burned away by Confederates.

Edwin Coppoc Yes Unwounded Yes Lieutenant < 30 white HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

Person’s Name On Raid? Shot Dead? Hanged? His Function Age Race

Edwin Coppoc, who had been born on June 30, 1835 and orphaned and adopted at the age of 6 into a nonresistant- abolitionist Quaker farm family first of Salem, Ohio and then of Springdale, Iowa. On March 6, 1857 he was disowned by the Religious Society of Friends and in the spring of 1858 went to “Bleeding Kansas” as a settler — but did not take part in the fighting. It was during a visit to Springdale in the fall of 1858 that he met John Brown. He would surrender with Captain Brown in the engine house at Harpers Ferry, and would be tried by a jury of his white male peers immediately after the conclusion of the trial of Captain Brown while his still-Quaker brother Barclay Coppoc was eluding capture. He was sentenced on November 2. From prison before his hanging, he wrote his adoptive mother that he was

“sorry to say that I was ever induced to raise a gun.” THE QUAKER PEACE TESTIMONY

He was hung with John Edwin Cook on December 16th, 1859 and a day later his brother turned up at home in Iowa (he also would soon be disowned). The body of Edwin Coppoc was buried in Winona, Iowa after a funeral attended by the entire town (later the body would be reburied in Salem, Ohio).

Richard Henry Dana, Jr. No No No Enabler white

Treason being punished as what it is, why would the downtown Boston lawyer Richard Henry Dana, Jr. allow himself to become legal counsel to a “Secret Six” committee that was funding the activities of Captain John Brown, as that loose cannon prepared to raid the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia? He was going to be implicated as having obviously had guilty prior knowledge, and was obviously making himself of necessity a prime candidate for the noose. As the going got hot he would make himself unavailable for prosecution –by venturing on a luxury trip around the globe– but the issue is not how he might extricate himself from this, but why he would have so endangered himself.

Martin Robison Delany No No No Supporter of color

Dr. Martin Robison Delany, Pennsylvania, 1843; attended the Colored National Convention of 1848; attended the Emigration Convention of 1854; a member of the Niger Valley Exploring Party in 1858; a member of the Vigilance Committee in Chatham and Windsor in September 1858. At a meeting of the conspirators in Chatham in Canada West in May 1858, “M.R. Delany,” the Reverend William Charles Munroe of Detroit, and several other leaders of the large black expatriate community approved something termed the “Provisional Constitution and Ordinances for the people of the United States,” as the charter for the pike-wielding fugitive society of raiders which was to be created in the remote fastness of the Allegheny Mountains by Captain John Brown subsequent to his raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. That document would be discovered on Brown’s person when he was taken into custody. He would be a Major in the 104th Colored Infantry, and Sub-Assistant Commissioner of the Freedmen’s Bureau in South Carolina, in 1865. He was a Freemason.

Frederick Douglass No No No Supporter 41 of color HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

Person’s Name On Raid? Shot Dead? Hanged? His Function Age Race

Waldo Emerson urged Frederick Douglass early on, to make himself into the General Toussaint Louverture of the North American continent. When Captain John Brown made a speech offering himself as the leader for the forces of freedom in “Bleeding Kansas”, Douglass stood in the audience and endorsed Brown and his mission despite the unpleasant fact that the plan of the abolitionists was to permanently exclude all persons of color, whether free or enslaved, from that new state. When the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry was raided, his role was intended to be the raising aloft of the sword of General George Washington and the generaling of the black forces. His involvement in this raid was acceptable to such personages as the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher only because his blood had been mixed with white it was removed to a degree from its original “low animal condition” (the Reverend’s category, the Reverend’s words) of blackness. At the very last moment Douglass perceived that the prospects of the raid were for either failure or betrayal, and fled by way of Canada to England.

Ralph Waldo Emerson No No No Supporter white

Waldo Emerson, acting as an agent provocateur of race war, recommended to Frederick Douglass in 1844 that he become the liberator of his people on the North American continent, modeling himself upon the leader of the successful Haitian revolution of the turn of the century, Toussaint Louverture. “Let me hold your coat while some white man kills you,” or something to that effect. We only know about this because Henry Thoreau rushed down to Boston right after the lecture, and had the lecture printed up as a pamphlet — after which there was no lying about the provocation that had been made and so all Emerson could do was pretend that Douglass hadn’t been present.

John Buchanan Floyd No No No Supporter white

Secretary of War John Buchanan Floyd was one of those who had been warned, months in advance, that Captain John Brown was planning to attack a federal arsenal to seize weapons with which to arm black slaves, in the creation of a servile insurrection (he didn’t know precisely when, and didn’t know it would be at Harpers Ferry, Virginia). Such a prospect did not alarm him in the slightest. The official story, if the official story is what you want to believe, is that our Secretary of War would pass this warning along to no-one. I myself find it difficult to regard this as anything more than a cover. I think the truth was that these folks were aware that such a servile insurrection could lead to nothing but a race genocide, with white Americans exterminating the black ones, and what I fear is that such a race genocide would have been considered to be just fine, an improvement in our national condition. Let’s not have ourselves a civil war of brother against brother, that would be so nasty — let’s prevent that by having ourselves a nice little race war!

Hugh Forbes No No No Lieutenant white HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

Person’s Name On Raid? Shot Dead? Hanged? His Function Age Race

Captain John Brown’s scheme, which he referred to as the “Subterranean Pass Way,” was that the escaped, armed slaves were to “swarm” into and set up a center of resistance in the Alleghenies from which they could liberate Virginia and then invade Tennessee and northern Alabama. Such a scoping of the situation never met with much respect from other of the other schemers. In particular, the Scottish adventurer Hugh Forbes, Brown’s onetime principal lieutenant, regarding blacks as inherently childlike, credulous, and cowardly, believed such a scheme to be doomed to failure from its inception. The scenario preferred by Forbes would have involved the herding of the slaves together by armed bands of white men and the driving of such herds of humans up the mountain chain toward Canada, neatly disposing of America’s entire race problem — by simple relocation of it to another nation. Evidently the two planners parted company over issues such as this after Forbes had functioned in Tabor, Iowa as the leader of military training for the recruits (Forbes was a veteran of the Grenadier Guards, and had fought along with Garibaldi in defense of the Roman Republic of 1849), and then Forbes attempted blackmail. When not offered a payoff, he wrote long, detailed letters to congressmen and to others, and it is one of the unresolved issues, how anyone in high office in Washington DC could have avoided knowing in advance that Brown was plotting a strike of some sort against slavery (another of the unresolved issues is what happened to Forbes once his extortion had failed — he simply disappeared from the pages of history).

George B. Gill

George B. Gill had come to “Bleeding Kansas” in 1857 after whaling in the Pacific Ocean, and had there been recruited by John Brown. His name was among the signatories to “Provisional Constitution and Ordinances for the People of the United States,” from a document in Brown’s handwriting that would be captured when he and his men were subdued at Harpers Ferry on October 18th, 1859. He alarmed other conspirators by conducting himself in such manner as to attract attention and arouse suspicion, for instance displaying weapons, bragging to lady friends that he had been in Kansas and had killed 5 men, informing other boarders at his lodgings that he was in town on a secret expedition with other fighters, who were under his command, etc. During the year before the raid, Captain Brown sent Gill to visit a black con artist named Mr. Reynolds who persuaded Gill that he had gone through the South organizing and had brought into existence in areas of the South a militant organization of black men and women. Pointing out to Gill that Southern newspapers carried numerous references to the death of a favorite slave, he alleged that these were leaders of servile insurrection plots who were being discovered and offed. According to this “mumper” Southern blacks were ready and needed only to be given a cue. There is evidence that several slaves from the vicinity of the arsenal did participate in the raid itself, but returned hastily to their plantations when it became obvious that the raid was a failure. Several fires were set in the vicinity of Harpers Ferry in the week after the raid, probably by slaves and free black Americans (Richard Hinton estimates that $10,000,000 was lost in the sale of Virginia slaves in the year 1859; census figures show that between 1850 and 1860 there was almost a 10% decline in blacks in the three counties surrounding Harpers Ferry, a period during which the total number of blacks in Maryland and Virginia was increasing by about 4%).

The Rev. and Mrs. Gloucester No Financial support of color HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

Person’s Name On Raid? Shot Dead? Hanged? His Function Age Race

The Reverend James Newton Gloucester and Elizabeth A. Parkhill Gloucester of Brooklyn, New York were wealthy financial supporters of the servile-insurrection plot of Captain John Brown, or “Shubel Morgan,” or “Isaac Smith” (depending on what alias he was using at the time), and had put him up for a week at their home while he was enroute to Harpers Ferry. According to a report in a local newspaper: Brown said, “Goodbye, Sister Gloucester. I’ve only sixteen men, but I’m to conquer.” Mrs. Gloucester said to him, “Perhaps you will lose your life.” “Well, my life,” he replied, “is not worth much. I’m an old man. In Kansas, the balls flew around my head as thick as hail. I’ll never be killed by a ball. If I fall, I’ll open a ball in this country that will never stop until every slave is free.”

Shields Green Yes No Yes Private < 30 of color

Shields Green was an escapee from South Carolina who had served as clothes cleaner in Rochester, New York (his business card there declared “I make no promise that I am unable to perform”) and acted as a bodyguard for Frederick Douglass. He was known as “Emperor,” although how he obtained this nickname is not now known. He decided to go with John Brown when Douglass turned back at the stone quarry prior to the Harpers Ferry raid, saying to his boss “I believe I’ll go with the old man.” He took part in the raid and then refused to speak during his trial. At the time of his hanging he was about 23 years of age. His cadaver would be dug up and used for the instruction of students at the medical college in Winchester, Virginia. He, like John Anderson Copeland, Jr. and Lewis Sheridan Leary, had been a resident of Oberlin, Ohio. A monument was erected by the citizens of Oberlin in honor of their 3 fallen free citizens of color (the 8-foot marble monument would be moved to Vine Street Park in 1971).

James Henry Harris HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

Person’s Name On Raid? Shot Dead? Hanged? His Function Age Race

No one associated with Captain John Brown, and no one associated with politics in North Carolina, has ever been awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. “J.H. Harris” signed, as a member of a Vigilance Committee, on May 8th, 1858, the “Provisional Constitution and Ordinances for the People of the United States” in Chatham, Ontario West, Canada, a document which would be found on the person of John Brown when he was captured at Harpers Ferry on October 18th, 1859. Although another person of this name, James Henry Harris, had been born a slave in Granville County, North Carolina and had gained his freedom at the age of 18 in about 1848, he was not this “J.H. Harris.” Educated at Oberlin College, he would hold a teaching certificate from the New England Freedman’s Aid Society. He was of Cleveland in 1859, and a member of the 102d US Colored Infantry formed in Michigan by George DeBaptiste that included so many men from Chatham. He would attend the 1st Freedmen’s Convention in the South, held in what would become the St. Paul A.M.E. Church on Edenton Street in Raleigh during September 1865 as a representative of Wake County. He would become the 1st black alderman from Raleigh, and a delegate from Raleigh to the North Carolina Constitutional Convention of 1868; he got married with Bettie Miller, a daughter of Addison J. Smith and Mary Anderson, a cousin of Osborn Perry Anderson; he died in 1891 in Washington DC and the remains are at Mount Hope Cemetery in Raleigh. There is yet a 3d James H. Harris, who was not this “J.H. Harris” signatory, who was belatedly awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor and is interred in the remote section of Arlington National Cemetery that was reserved for colored soldiers, and for contrabands.

Lewis Hayden

Lewis Hayden, a black leader in downtown Boston whose escape from Kentucky had been aided by Delia Webster in 1844. Eight years after escaping from slavery, he raised, as an act of gratitude and duty, a sum of $650, in order to ransom the Reverend Calvin Fairbanks out of the Kentucky State Prison at Frankfort, where the Reverend had been languishing under the accusation that he had assisted 47 slaves in their escape, and had served 14 years, and had been whipped and beaten. Just before the raid on Harpers Ferry, Hayden helped recruit Francis Jackson Meriam to carry a message and cash money to the hideout of John Brown, and take part in that struggle.

Albert Hazlett Yes No Yes Capt. or Lt. < 30 white HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

Person’s Name On Raid? Shot Dead? Hanged? His Function Age Race

Albert Hazlett, born in Pennsylvania on September 21st, 1837, did not take part in the fight at Harpers Ferry but, with John Edwin Cook who had escaped from that fight by climbing a tree and who later identified him to the prosecutors, would be belatedly hanged. Before the raid he had worked on his brother’s farm in western Pennsylvania, and he had joined the others at Kennedy Farm in the early part of September 1859. He was arrested on October 22d in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, near Chambersburg, where he was using the name “William Harrison,” was extradited to Virginia, was tried and sentenced at the spring term of the Court, and was hanged on March 16th, 1860. George B. Gill wrote “I was acquainted with Hazlett well enough in Kansas, yet after all knew but little of him. He was with Montgomery considerably, and was with [Aaron D. Stevens] on the raid in which Cruise was killed. He was a good-sized, fine-looking fellow, overflowing with good nature and social feelings.... Brown got acquainted with him just before leaving Kansas.” He wrote to Mrs. Rebecca B. Spring on March 15th, 1860, the eve of his hanging, “Your letter gave me great comfort to know that my body would be taken from this land of chains.... I am willing to die in the cause of liberty, if I had ten thousand lives I would willingly lay them all down for the same cause.”

Reverend T. W. Higginson No White

The Reverend Thomas Wentworth “Charles P. Carter” Higginson of the Secret “Six”’s earliest American ancestor was the 1st minister of Salem. He believed that “Never in history was there an oppressed people who were set free by others” (it was therefore up to American black people to demonstrate their courage, and their worthiness to be free — basically by getting themselves exterminated). After Harpers Ferry he would attempt to organize an expedition to raid the Charles Town lockup and rescue the accused — this was an expedition Henry Thoreau would oppose, asserting that to the contrary Captain Brown’s highest and best purpose was to be hung.

Richard J. Hinton

Richard Josiah Hinton, abolitionist journalist whose opposition to slavery led him to transform himself into a gunslinger. Refer to: Richard J. Hinton, JOHN BROWN AND HIS MEN (NY: Funk & Wagnalls, 1894; Reprint NY: The Arno Press, 1968).

WHAT TO TAKE: Let your trunk, if you have to buy one, be of moderate size and of the strongest make. Test it by throwing it from the top of a three-storied house; if you pick it up uninjured, it will do to go to Kansas. Not otherwise. — James Redpath and Richard J. Hinton, HAND-BOOK TO KANSAS TERRITORY, 1859, as quoted on page 3 of William Least Heat-Moon’s PrairyErth (a deep map) [Boston MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1991].

Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

Person’s Name On Raid? Shot Dead? Hanged? His Function Age Race

Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe and others of the Massachusetts State Kansas Committee raised $5,000 in one day, to buy enough Sharp’s rifles to arm 200 men to the teeth in “Bleeding Kansas.” He, as well as the Reverend Theodore Parker, Franklin Benjamin Sanborn, Gerrit Smith, and George Luther Stearns, fully grasped from the earliest moment the fact that the probable result of their attempt to incite a race war (black Americans against white), would be, at least initially, a defeat of the black forces of servile insurrection. These 5 of the white conspirators of the Secret “Six” finance committee clearly had been willing to sacrifice the lives of their black allies in order to foment sectional civil war between Northern and Southern white Americans.

Julia Ward Howe No White

Julia Ward Howe was a racist and, because she carried out errands for her husband Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe who was on the Secret “Six” finance committee (such as having a surreptitious meeting in their home with Captain John Brown), must surely have been aware of and must surely have approved of that committee’s agendas.

Thaddeus Hyatt No white

Thaddeus Hyatt was a businessman and financier involved in the preparation of “Bleeding Kansas” as a “free soil” or “Aryan Nation” enclave. Summoned to give testimony before the congressional committee investigating the raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, he would refuse to appear and would be imprisoned for a period —but ultimately would get away with this refusal.

John Jones No No No Support of color

John Jones was a Chicago businessman of mixed race, an upscale tailor (John Brown visited his home). He and his wife Mary Jane Richardson Jones were active abolitionists whose home was a station on the Underground Railroad while they agitated for repeal of “Black Laws” (not only did these laws obligate black Americans to prove that they were free to enter the state of Illinois but, once there, these laws barred them from visiting the homes of whites, owning any property or merchandise, or entering into any contract).

John Henry Kagi Yes Yes Secretary of War 24 white HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

Person’s Name On Raid? Shot Dead? Hanged? His Function Age Race

Although John Henry Kagi, AKA Maurice Maitland, AKA John Henrie, was largely self-taught, his letters to the New-York Tribune, the New-York Evening Post, and the National Era reveal him as the best educated of the raiders. A debater, public speaker, stenographer, wannabee writer, and total abstainer from alcohol, he was cold in manner and rough in appearance. A nonparticipant in organized religion, he was an able man of business. He had been born on March 15, 1835, a son of the blacksmith for Bristolville, Ohio in a family of Swiss descent (the name originally having been Kagy). During 1854/1855 he had taught school at Hawkinstown, Virginia but had indicated an objection to the system of slavery there and been compelled to return to Ohio with a pledge never to return. He had gone to Nebraska City in 1856 and been admitted to the bar. He then entered Kansas with one of General James H. Lane’s parties and enlisted in Aaron D. Stevens’s (“Colonel Whipple’s”) 2d Kansas Militia. In fighting in the town of Tecumseh in “Bleeding Kansas” he proved himself by killing at least one man, who had been coming after him with a club. After being captured by US troops he had been imprisoned at Lecompton and at Tecumseh, but was finally released. On January 31, 1857 he had been struck on the head with a gold-headed cane by a slaveowning territorial judge, drew his revolver and shot the judge in the groin, but Judge Physic Rush Elmore got off 3 shots and one struck Kagi over the heart, the bullet being stopped by a memorandum-book. He was long with his family in Ohio recovering from these wounds, but then returned to Kansas and joined John Brown. He bore the title of Secretary of War in the provisional government and was next in command to John Brown; he was also the adjutant. His name was among the signatories to “Provisional Constitution and Ordinances for the People of the United States,” from a document in Brown’s handwriting that would be captured when he and his men were subdued at Harpers Ferry on October 18, 1859. When in Chambersburg as agent for the raiders, he boarded with Mrs. Mary Rittner. “In a very few days we shall commence,” he wrote on the eve of the raid, “things could not be more cheerful and more certain of success than they are. We have worked hard and suffered much, but the hardest is down now, and a glorious success is in sight.... Be cheerful. Don’t imagine dangers. All will be well.” At Harpers Ferry he was trapped along with John Anderson Copeland, Jr. and Lewis Sheridan Leary in the armory called Hall’s Rifle Works. When the 3 made a run for it, heading down to the Shenandoah River, they got caught in crossfire and Kagi was the first killed, shot in the head, his body being left to float in the river.

Amos Lawrence No White

Amos Lawrence and his son Amos Adams Lawrence provided the large bulk of the investment capital needed by Eli Thayer’s New England Emigrant Aid Company for the purchase land in the new territory then well known as “Bleeding Kansas,” needed in order to encourage the right sort of black-despising poor white Americans to settle there as “decent antislavery” homesteaders. The idea was to send entire communities in one fell swoop, increasing the value of the properties owned by this company. If political control over this territory could be achieved, they would be able to set up a real Aryan Nation, from which slaves would of course be excluded because they were enslaved, and from which free blacks Americans would of course be excluded because as human material they were indelibly inferior.

Lewis Sheridan Leary Yes Yes Private 25 of color HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

Person’s Name On Raid? Shot Dead? Hanged? His Function Age Race

Lewis Sheridan “Shad” Leary was a mulatto citizen of Oberlin, Ohio, a saddler and harness maker whose father had been a freeborn black harness maker as well. He was descended from an Irishman, Jeremiah O’Leary, who had fought in the Revolution under General Nathanael Greene of Rhode Island, who had married a woman of mixed blood, partly African, partly of that Croatan Indian stock of North Carolina, which is believed by some to be lineally descended from the “lost colonists” left by John White on Roanoke Island in 1587. Leary was born at Fayetteville, North Carolina on March 17th, 1835, and was therefore in his 25th year when killed during the raid upon the federal arsenal. In 1857 he had gone to Oberlin to live, marrying there and making the acquaintance of John Brown in Cleveland. To go to Harpers Ferry he left his wife with a 6-month-old child at Oberlin, his wife being in ignorance of the purpose of his trip. He was given funds to go from Oberlin to Chambersburg in the company of his nephew John Anderson Copeland, Jr. “Tell no man where I have gone,” he commented, “you’ll see me again, but I’ll be marching at the top of the drum.... Men must suffer for a good cause.” He was isolated along with his nephew and John Henry Kagi in the armory called Hall’s Rifle Works. When the men made a run for it, heading down to the Shenandoah River, they got themselves caught in a crossfire, and after Kagi had been killed and Leary shot several times, he was taken, his wounds so severe that he would die the following morning. He was able to dictate messages to his family and is reported as having said “I am ready to die.” The Leary child would subsequently be educated by James Redpath and Wendell Phillips. The corpse was dumped into the common pit beside the Shenandoah River, not to be exhumed until 1899. A monument was erected by the citizens of Oberlin in honor of their fallen free men of color, Leary, Copeland, and Shields Green (this 8-foot marble monument would be relocated to Vine Street Park in 1971).

William H. Leeman Yes Yes Captain < 21 white

William H. Leeman was of a wild disposition. Educated in the public schools of Saco and Hallowell, Maine, by the age of 14 he was working in a shoe factory in Haverhill, Massachusetts. He went to “Bleeding Kansas” with the 2d batch of recruits from Massachusetts, and on September 9, 1856 became a member of Captain John Brown’s “Volunteer Regulars.” He fought well at Osawatomie when but 17 years of age. At Springdale, Iowa, Owen Brown found him full of swagger and bluster and difficult to control George B. Gill said of him that he had “a good intellect with great ingenuity.” He signed “W.H. Leeman” to “Provisional Constitution and Ordinances for the People of the United States,” per a document in Brown’s handwriting that would be captured when the raiders were subdued at Harpers Ferry. By the raid upon Harpers Ferry he had reached the age of 20, the youngest of the raiders. He wrote his mother, “I shall be in danger, but it is natural to me. I shall not get killed. I am in a good cause, and I am not afraid.” He made a mad dash out of the relative safety of the armory to attempt to escape by swimming down the Potomac River, where two militiamen caught up with him and shot him down on an islet. For hours his corpse would be used for target practice by drunken citizens, until their hail of bullets pushed the riddled remains into a current that drew it along until only his black hair could be glimpsed in the ripples on the surface. Mrs. Annie Brown Adams would write of him: “He was only a boy. He smoked a good deal and drank sometimes; but perhaps people would not think that so very wicked now. He was very handsome and very attractive.”

Francis Jackson Merriam Yes No No Private < 30 white HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

Person’s Name On Raid? Shot Dead? Hanged? His Function Age Race

Francis Jackson Meriam, grandson and namesake of the Garrisonian abolitionist and Boston historian Francis Jackson, was a young manic-depressive with one good eye. He helped James Redpath collect materials in Haiti and across the American South for use in a book dedicated to John Brown and Redpath arranged for him to join the Harpers Ferry guerrillas. He was not captured or killed because he had been left during the raid in one of his fits of despair at the Kennedy farmhouse. After escaping through Shippensburg, Philadelphia, Boston, Concord, and the area of St. Catharines, Canada he served as a captain in the 3d South Carolina Colored Infantry. Erratic and unbalanced, he urged wild schemes upon his superiors and sometimes attempted them. He created, for instance, a list of 5 secret-writing inks for confidential correspondence. In an engagement under General Ulysses S. Grant he received a serious leg wound. He died suddenly on November 28, 1865 in New-York.

Charles W. Moffett Yes white

We believe that the name of Charles W. Moffett of Iowa was among the signatories to Chatham, Ontario’s “Provisional Constitution and Ordinances for the People of the United States” as “C.W. Moffit,” per a document in Brown’s handwriting that would be captured when he and his men were subdued at Harpers Ferry on October 18, 1859. Perhaps this “W” stood for “Wesley,” if we can rely upon a tombstone in the Maple Hill cemetery in Montour, Iowa (“Charles Wesley Moffett / Jun. 20, 1827-Aug. 19, 1904”). We wonder if perhaps he did not attend the raid on the federal arsenal because he got cold feet, or perhaps because he was one of a number of people suspected by the others of having written to alert Secretary of War John Buchanan Floyd to the plan for a raid on a federal arsenal (the Cabinet member received these warnings while at Red Sweet Springs in Virginia and neglected to alert anyone to be on the lookout for such an attack — he would remind people later that as War Secretary he had been getting a whole lot of spurious warnings).

Edwin Morton No White

The very tall Franklin Benjamin Sanborn’s intimate college friend Edwin Morton of Plymouth, a descendant of one of the prominent Founding Fathers, and from a long line of violinists, was about as deeply involved in the Harpers Ferry raid as any member of the Secret “Six.” He was Gerrit Smith’s private secretary and resided with that family, tutoring the son. After the raid, with the heat on while Jefferson Davis was conducting a congressional investigation, he fled overseas as did Frederick Douglass, and for the duration chummed around at Shrewsbury and Hodnet with Henry Thoreau’s very tall friend Thomas Cholmondeley before settling for health reasons in Switzerland.

Dangerfield Newby Yes Yes bridge sentinel 39 light mulatto HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

Person’s Name On Raid? Shot Dead? Hanged? His Function Age Race

Dangerfield Newby, a free light mulatto, son of a Scotsman, very tall and with a splendid physique, was written by his wife begged him to obtain funds to purchase her and their baby who that had just “commenced to crawl ... as soon as possible, for if you do not get me somebody else will.” She pleaded “Oh Dear Dangerfield, come this fall without fail, money or no money I want to see you so much; that is the one bright hope I have before me.” He was serving as a sentinel at the Harpers Ferry bridge and was shot to death as he and the two white men with him retreated before the charge of the Jefferson Guards of Charles Town, Virginia, coming across the Potomac from the Maryland side. He was not brought down by ball or bullet but by a 6-inch spike being used as a musket projectile, which caught him in the throat and ripped him severely. Since neither of the white men were shot, it appears that as a mulatto he was targeted. The body was beaten savagely, and its ears snipped off as trophies, and then a herd of hogs was driven up to root on it. His corpse was dumped into the shallow group pit beside the Shenandoah River, to be exhumed in 1899.

Reverend Theodore Parker No White

The Reverend Theodore Parker, a stone racist, declared from his pulpit that while he ordinarily spent $1,500 a year on books, the equivalent of 4 or 5 men’s annual wages, for the time being he was going to restrict himself to spending less than one man’s annual wage on books per year, and devote the remaining moneys to the purchase of guns and ammunition for the white people going to the Kansas Territory. Sharps rifles, the very latest in deadliness, cost $25 apiece when had in sufficient quantity:

“I make all my pecuniary arrangements with the expectation of civil war.”

He would take to marking the boxes of new Sharps rifles he shipped illegally to “Bleeding Kansas” with the word BOOKS, and he would take to referring to these firearms as so many copies of RIGHTS OF THE PEOPLE as in “The right of the people to keep and to bear arms shall not be infringed.” He, as well as Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, Franklin Benjamin Sanborn, Gerrit Smith, and George Luther Stearns of the Secret “Six”, fully grasped from the earliest moment the fact that the probable result of their attempt to incite a race war, of black Americans against white Americans, would be, at least initially, a defeat of the black forces of servile insurrection. These 5 of the white conspirators clearly had been willing to sacrifice the lives of their allies among the Northern and Southern black Americans slave and free, in order to foment a rectification of the Southern white Americans.

Luke F. Parsons White

Luke Fisher Parsons was a free-state fighter seasoned in “Bleeding Kansas.” He took part in the battle of Black Jack near Baldwin City on June 2d, 1856, the battle of Osawatomie on August 30th, 1856, and the raid on Iowa during Winter 1857/1858. His name “L.F. Parsons” was among the signatories to “Provisional Constitution and Ordinances for the People of the United States,” per a document in John Brown’s handwriting that would be captured when the raiders were subdued at Harpers Ferry. He had gone off toward a supposed Colorado gold rush and, summoned by letters from Brown and Kagi, did not manage to make it back to take part in the raid on the federal arsenal, or to attempt to rescue the prisoners once they were waiting to be hanged, at the jail in Charlestown, Virginia. He started a family and lived out a long life as a farmer in Salina, Kansas. HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

Person’s Name On Raid? Shot Dead? Hanged? His Function Age Race

Friend John Hunt Painter White

John Hunt Painter, a birthright Quaker who owned a farm near Springdale, Iowa, a farm that was used as a waystation on the Underground Railroad, forwarded stored firearms to Captain John Brown at his hideout near Harpers Ferry. After disownment by the Religious Society of Friends he would relocate his farm family to downtown Pasadena, California to there construct and be the proprietor of the toney La Pintoresca hotel.

Richard Realf White

Richard Realf, English poet, was the son of a blacksmith who had become a rural constable. In 1852 he had published GUESSES AT THE BEAUTIFUL and in 1854, after giving up being the lover of George Gordon, Lord Byron’s aging widow Lady Noell Byron, he had been led to the United States of America by “instincts” he characterized as “democratic and republican, or, at least, anti-monarchical.” At the end of November or beginning of December 1857 he had been introduced to John Brown in Mount Tabor, Iowa by John Edwin Cook, whom he had met in Lawrence in “Bleeding Kansas” while working as a correspondent for the Illinois State Gazette. He traveled through Chicago and Detroit to Chatham, Ontario West, Canada and signed the “Provisional Constitution and Ordinances for the People of the United States,” per a document in Brown’s handwriting found when the survivors were subdued at Harpers Ferry on October 18th, 1859. By reading a book of ethical philosophy written by the President of Brown University, he determined that this violent agenda, and radical abolitionism in general, were a wrong path, and so he returned to England to lecture, and visited France. He embarked at Le Havre on March 2d, 1859, arriving at New Orleans on April 17th, 1959 with the intention of becoming a Jesuit priest, then with an aim to join the Shakers, and made no further contact with Captain Brown. After the raid he would voluntarily testify before the US Senate Committee and then enlist in a regiment of the Union Army.

James Redpath

James Redpath, crusading journalist out to make a buck in the best way. –Panderer in the pornography of armchair violence, at first in regard to the horrors of Southern slavery, –then in regard to the horrors of “Bleeding Kansas” –then in regard to the horrors of starving Ireland. Finally, after the Civil War, without fresh horrors to proffer to his armchair audience, he would resort to publishing defamatory doggerel poetry — lines in which he age-shames and fat-shames various Boston society ladies. –Never a dull moment for this “tell it like it is” dude! The Charleston, Virginia hangman sent him a piece of the scaffold, for which he devised a label: “A Bit of the True Cross, a Chip from the Scaffold of John Brown.”

George J. Reynolds of color HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

Person’s Name On Raid? Shot Dead? Hanged? His Function Age Race

George J. Reynolds was a light mulatto with native American as well as black African heritage, a blacksmith or coppersmith, from Virginia although claiming to be from Vermont, aged about 35 at the time of the raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, and active in the Underground Railroad. He attended the Convention of Colored Men in 1858, and signed the “Provisional Constitution and Ordinances for the People of the United States” in Chatham, Ontario West, Canada per a document in John Brown’s handwriting that would be captured when he and his men were subdued on October 18th, 1859, as “J.G. Reynolds” (3 weeks after signing on to this conspiracy he was disclosing some of Captain Brown’s agenda to a black secret paramilitary group at the Masonic Lodge of his home town, Sandusky, Ohio).

Richard Richardson No of color

Richard Richardson, a fugitive slave from Lexington, Missouri who had joined John Brown in southern Iowa, was going through that unfortunate but now-well-understood initial period of reaction to freedom in which a former slave, accustomed to servitude and unaccustomed to self-origination, attaches himself to some authoritative white man who is able with courtesy to make use of him. He was a member of the African Mysteries, a secret defense group in Michigan in 1858, and signed the “Provisional Constitution and Ordinances for the People of the United States” in Chatham, per a document in Brown’s handwriting that would be captured when he and his men were subdued at Harpers Ferry on October 18, 1859, but evidently did not get from Ontario to Virginia due to lack of travel money. He became a private in Company E of the 113th US Colored Infantry that was formed from the 13th US Colored Infantry that was recruited in and spent its entire service in Arkansas.

Judge Thomas Russell No White

Thomas Russell and Mary Ellen “Nellie” Taylor Russell visited John Brown in jail in Charleston, Virginia a few weeks before his execution. She said that although she had never approved of his violent methods, she admired him as a man of vision and idealism. Brown had been friends with the Russells for years and had stayed at their home on several occasions despite the husband being prominent in the Massachusetts judiciary. Franklin Benjamin Sanborn of the Secret “Six” would allege long after the raid on Harpers Ferry that “Brown’s general purpose of attacking slavery by force, in Missouri or elsewhere, was known in 1857-8-9” to Judge Russell.

Franklin Benjamin Sanborn No White HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

Person’s Name On Raid? Shot Dead? Hanged? His Function Age Race

Franklin Benjamin Sanborn of Concord descended from the founder and 1st minister of the old New Hampshire plantation of Hampton. Another ancestor, the Reverend Stephen Bachiler, was the 1st minister of Lynn, and probably had among his parishioners there, in 1635-1636, Thomas Parker, the 1st American ancestor of Theodore Parker. He, as well as Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, the Reverend Theodore Parker, Gerrit Smith, and George Luther Stearns, fully grasped from the earliest moment the fact that the probable result of their attempt to incite a race war, of black Americans against white Americans, would be, at least initially, a defeat of their black forces. These 5 of the white Secret “Six” conspirators clearly had been willing to sacrifice the lives of their black allies for servile insurrection in order to foment sectional civil war between Northern and Southern white Americans. (John Brown, who had himself buried a wife and promptly recruited another one, once commented to Sanborn, in regard to the young man’s grief over the prompt death of his young bride Ariana Walker, that he was too young to be married to a gravestone.)

Gerrit Smith No White

The immensely wealthy “H. Ross Perot” political figure of that era was a former Millerite millennialist: Gerrit Smith. In this American’s mansion outside Syracuse, New York, standing in the center of his study, was an ornate mahogany desk. Rumor had it that this had once been the desk of the emperor Napoleon Bonaparte himself. The millennium of William Miller not having arrived on schedule, Smith had become determined to, as he put it, “make himself a colored man” –he desired to explore his inner blackness– and thus he befriended Frederick Douglass (Smith would be Douglass’s friend, that is, up to the point at which he would discover that black Americans were inherently racially inferior to white Americans and thus unworthy of consideration). He, as well as Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, the Reverend Theodore Parker, Franklin Benjamin Sanborn, and George Luther Stearns of the Secret “Six” fully grasped from the earliest moment that the probable result of their attempt to incite a servile insurrection of black Americans against white Americans, would be, at least initially, a defeat of the black forces. These 5 of the white conspirators clearly had been willing to sacrifice the lives of their black allies, in order to disrupt relations between Northern and Southern white Americans, toward the generation of a sectional civil war.

Stephen Smith

Stephen Smith, lumber dealer of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Lysander Spooner

The anarchist Boston attorney Lysander Spooner, who was well aware of John Brown’s plans for the raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, wrote to Gerrit Smith in January 1859 warning that Brown had neither the men nor the resources to succeed. After the raid he would plot the kidnapping of Governor Henry A. Wise of Virginia, the idea being to take him at pistol point aboard a tug and hold him off the Atlantic coast, at threat of execution should Brown be executed.

George Luther Stearns HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

Person’s Name On Raid? Shot Dead? Hanged? His Function Age Race

George Luther Stearns, a Boston manufacturer of lead pipe and the secretary of the Boston Emancipation League, as well as Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, the Reverend Theodore Parker, Franklin Benjamin Sanborn, and Gerrit Smith of the Secret “Six,” fully grasped from the earliest moment the fact that the probable result of their attempt to incite a race war, of black Americans against white Americans, would be, at least initially, a defeat of their black forces. These 5 of the white conspirators clearly had been willing to sacrifice the lives of their black allies in servile insurrection in order to forestall a sectional civil war between Northern and Southern white Americans.

Aaron Dwight Stevens Yes Badly Yes Captain 28 white wounded

Aaron Dwight Stevens, John Brown’s drillmaster, born in Lisbon, Connecticut on March 15th, 1831, was of old Puritan stock, his great-grandfather having served as a captain during the Revolutionary. He had run away from home in 1847 at the age of 16 to serve with a Massachusetts volunteer regiment during the Mexican War. Well over 6 feet tall, he made himself proficient with the sword. Enlisting in Company F of the 1st US Dragoons, at Taos during May 1855 he received a sentence of death for “mutiny, engaging in a drunken riot, and assaulting Major George A.H. Blake.” This was commuted by President Franklin Pierce to 3 years hard labor but he escaped from Fort Leavenworth in 1856, 1st finding refuge with the Delaware tribe and then joining the Kansas Free State militia of James Lane under the name “Whipple.” He became Colonel of the 2d Kansas Militia and met Brown on August 7th, 1856 at the Nebraska line when Lane’s Army of the North marched into “Bleeding Kansas”. He became a devoted follower. He was a spiritualist. At Harpers Ferry, when Brown sent this middleaged man out along with his son Watson Brown to negotiate under a flag of truce, he received 4 bullets but was taken alive. The never- married Stevens had a relationship with Rebecca B. Spring of the Eagleswood social experiment near Perth Amboy, New Jersey, and after his execution on March 16th would be buried there alongside Albert Hazlett. According to George B. Gill, writing after his death, “Stevens — how gloriously he sang! His was the noblest soul I ever knew. Though owing to his rash, hasty way, I often found occasion to quarrel with him more so than with any of the others, and though I liked [John Henry Kagi] better than any man I ever knew, our temperaments being adapted to each other, yet I can truly say that Stevens was the most noble man that I ever knew.” He was hanged on March 16th, 1860.

Stewart Taylor Yes Yes Private 23 white HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

Person’s Name On Raid? Shot Dead? Hanged? His Function Age Race

Stewart Taylor was born on October 29th, 1836 at Uxbridge in Canada. He became a wagonmaker and in 1853 went to Iowa, where in 1858 he became acquainted with Captain Brown through George B. Gill. He was a very good phonographer [stenographer], rapid and accurate. A spiritualist, he confidently predicted his own death. He signed the “Provisional Constitution and Ordinances for the People of the United States” in Chatham, Ontario, Canada West per a document in Brown’s handwriting that would be captured when he and his men were subdued at Harpers Ferry on October 18, 1859. A relative, Jacob L. Taylor of Pine Orchard, Canada West, wrote to Richard J. Hinton on April 23d, 1860 that he had been “heart and soul in the anti-slavery cause.” An excellent debater and very fond of studying history, he stayed at home in Canada during Winter 1858/1859 and then went to Chicago, thence to Bloomington, Illinois and thence to Harper’s [sic] Ferry.” While out of touch with the John Brown movement, the 23-year-old had feared being left behind: “I felt as though I was deprived of my chief object in life.... I believe that fate has decreed me for this undertaking.... It is my chief desire to add fuel to the fire.” When mortally wounded in the engine house, begging to be put out of his misery, Brown instructed him “Die like a man.” What remained of his corpse would be recovered in 1899 from a soggy group pit near the Shenandoah River above Harpers Ferry.

Eli Thayer No

Eli Thayer, an entrepreneur who believed in “doing well by doing good,” formed the New England Emigrant Aid Company, to purchase land in the new territory then well known as “Bleeding Kansas” and encourage the right sort of black-despising poor white Americans to settle there by providing information, cheapening transportation, and setting up saw mills and flour mills to give work and incomes to such “decent antislavery” homesteaders. The idea was to send entire communities in one fell swoop, increasing the value of the properties owned by this company. If political control over this territory could be achieved, they would be able to set up a real Aryan Nation, from which slaves would of course be excluded because they were enslaved, and from which free blacks Americans would of course be excluded because as human material they were indelibly inferior. Thayer would comment in retrospect, about the antebellum abolitionists with whom he had been affiliated, that they had constituted “a mutual admiration society possessed by an unusual malignity towards those who did not belong to it.” He would instance that there was never “any diffidence or modesty in sounding their own praises.”

Dauphin Adolphus Thompson Yes Yes Lieutenant < 30 white

Dauphin Adolphus Thompson, brother of William Thompson and a North Elba neighbor of the family of John Brown, was born April 17, 1838. He was “very quiet, with fair, thoughtful face, curly blonde hair, and baby-blue eyes,” a “pippin-cheeked country boy.” His sister Isabella M. Thompson got married with Watson Brown and his elder brother Henry Thompson got married with Captain Brown’s daughter Ruth. “I suppose the folk think we are a set of fools,” he wrote from someplace he described as “Parts Unknown,” “but they will find out we know what we are about.” The two brothers died at Harpers Ferry, Dauphin cowering beneath a fire engine until skewered by a Marine bayonet. Their bodies were placed in the common pit beside the Shenandoah River above town, and exhumed in 1899.

William Thompson Yes Yes Captain? < 30 white HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

Person’s Name On Raid? Shot Dead? Hanged? His Function Age Race

William Thompson was born in New Hampshire in August 1833, the son of Roswell Thompson. During Fall 1858 he married a Mary Brown who was not related to the family of John Brown. His sister Isabella M. Thompson married Watson Brown; his elder brother Henry Thompson married Captain Brown’s daughter Ruth. He “would have made a successful comic actor ... he was very lively and full of funny stories and jokes.” He had started for “Bleeding Kansas” in 1856 but upon meeting the Brown sons returned with them to North Elba. Along with his brother Dauphin Adolphus Thompson, he took part in the raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, and the two of them were shot dead. When Captain Brown sent him out from the engine house to negotiate under flag of truce, the mob of citizens placed him under arrest, took him to the local hotel barroom, discussed what to do, dragged him into the street, executed him by shooting him in the head, and dumped his body onto the rocks of the Potomac River. The corpse “could be seen lying at the bottom of the river, with his ghastly face still showing what a fearful death agony he had experienced.” One of his captors commented that for such “villainous Abolitionists,” he “felt justified in shooting any that I could find. I felt it my duty, and I have no regrets.” The corpse was dumped into a common pit on the bank of the Shenandoah River above town, and buried about a foot deep.

Henry David Thoreau No white

When, in 1844, Waldo Emerson, acting as an agent provocateur, recommended to Frederick Douglass’s face that, modeling himself upon the leader of the successful Haitian revolution of the turn of the century, Toussaint Louverture, he fashion himself into the liberator of his people and initiate on the North American continent a servile insurrection or race war, it was Henry Thoreau who after the lecture rushed this information right down to Boston, and had a pamphlet printed up, after which there was no way to dissimulate about the provocation that had been made — and so all Emerson was able to do was pretend that Douglass hadn’t been present. (We, of course, have credited Emerson’s cover story, not because there is any corroboration for it but because ... well, he’s Mr. Emerson and wouldn’t lie to us.)

Charles Plummer Tidd Yes No No Captain 25 white HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

Person’s Name On Raid? Shot Dead? Hanged? His Function Age Race

Charles Plummer Tidd was born in Palermo, Maine on January 1st, 1834 and had emigrated to “Bleeding Kansas” in 1856 with the party of Dr. Calvin Cutter of Worcester in search of excitement. After joining John Brown’s party at Mount Tabor, Iowa in 1857 he became one of the followers of “Shubel Morgan” who returned in 1858 to raid into Missouri. During the Winter 1857/1858 encampment of the Brown forces in Springdale, Iowa, he “ruined” a Quaker girl and the other members of the team had to sneak him away during the night. Nevertheless, the group obtained some recruits not overly impressed with the Peace Testimony of George Fox from among the residents of this town, such as the brothers Barclay Coppoc and Edwin Coppoc. He and John E. Cook were particularly warm friends. He signed, as “Charles P. Tidd,” the “Provisional Constitution and Ordinances for the People of the United States” in Chatham, Canada per a document in Brown’s handwriting that would be captured when he and his men were subdued at Harpers Ferry on October 18th, 1859. He opposed the attack on Harpers Ferry but nevertheless took part both in the raid on the planter Washington’s home and on the federal arsenal itself, escaped, and made his way on foot toward the northwestern part of Pennsylvania. He and John Brown’s son Owen Brown would find work and safety, under assumed names, on an oil well in the vicinity of Crawford County, Pennsylvania. He visited Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Canada and took part in the planning for the rescue of Aaron D. Stevens and Albert Hazlett while the Mason Commission of the Congress was presuming that he had been killed in the fighting at Harpers Ferry. According to Mrs. Annie Brown Adams, “Tidd had not much education, but good common sense. After the raid he began to study, and tried to repair his deficiencies. He was by no means handsome. He had a quick temper, but was kind-hearted. His rages soon passed and then he tried all he could to repair damages. He was a fine singer and of strong family affections.” On July 19th, 1861 he was able to enlist under the name “Charles Plummer” and would become a 1st Sergeant of the 21st Massachusetts Volunteers. On February 8th, 1862 he died of fever aboard the transport Northerner during the battle of Roanoke Island. (This was a battle he had particularly wished to take part in because ex-Governor Henry A. Wise of Virginia, the nemesis of the Harpers Ferry raiders, was in command of the Confederates.) Tidd’s, or Charles Plummer’s, grave is #40 in the National Cemetery in New Berne, North Carolina. THE QUAKER PEACE TESTIMONY

Harriet Tubman No of color

Harriet Tubman was negotiated with by John Brown for participation in the raid on the federal arsenal. She mistrusted these men and had persistent dreams in which Brown and his sons appeared as serpents. The attack had been scheduled to occur on the 4th of July, symbolic of national birth. At the last moment she alleged she was ill, and for this reason as well as delays in the deliveries of supplies, the attack needed to be postponed for months. On the day of the actual attack at Harpers Ferry she had a premonition that it would fail.

Henry Watson No of color

Henry Watson, barber of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania involved both with John Brown and with Frederick Douglass.

etc. HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

RICHARD REALF HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

1805

January 27, Sunday: Kharkov University opened.

Martha Highlands was born in Framfield, Sussex.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1 day 27 of 1 M 1805 / Our meetings were small & silent, but quiet and comfortable. Took tea with D Williams, & in the evening was at J Earles ——————————————————————————————————————— RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

February 10, Sunday: Richard Realf was baptized at Framfield, Sussex. HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

1829

November 25, Wednesday: In Baltimore, a monument to George Washington was completed.

At the conclusion of his final concert in München the conductor Johann Hartmann Stuntz pressed a crown of laurels on the head of Nicolò Paganini — whereupon the virtuoso burst into tears.

Sophia Emily Graves was born at St. Georges, Knox, near Bangor, Maine.

Something about Sam Patch appeared in the Massachusetts Spy: His last jump at Genesee Falls, N.Y. HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

1832

June 14, Thursday: Robert Schumann noted in his diary that “the third finger was completely stiff.”

Richard Realf was born in the parish of Framfield, East Sussex, England, son of a blacksmith who had become a rural constable. HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

1835

The oldest multiple-arch stone viaduct in the USA, the Thomas Viaduct, was designed by Benjamin Henry Latrobe, Jr. and constructed for the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. Eight full-centered arches bridged 617 feet.

Work began on another railroad viaduct, near Canton, Massachusetts for the Boston and Providence Railroad.

Cuttings of Morus multicaulis that had been being sold in the previous year for $3 to $5 a hundred were at this point being sold for $10 a hundred. Along the banks of the Cuyahoga River in northern Ohio, at Franklin Mills, a number of investors planned a new company, the Franklin Land Company, that would raise silk worms for an American silk industry. They had noticed that mulberry trees grew well in this locality, but had yet to discover that in the cold winters of this locale, the silkworm did not thrive. John Brown got on board, purchasing more than 95 acres with borrowed money. In the national financial crisis of 1837 he would be driven into bankruptcy.

It would have been in about this year that Catherine Cassidy was born. Her father was James Cassidy (together they would constitute a determined team of American victimizers — and let this serve as a warning to you to be on the alert, and never ever do anything to fix the focus of such opportunists on yourself).

At some point toward the middle of the 1830s, Henry Box Brown, no relation to the above, having reached approximately the age of maturity, got married with an enslaved washerwoman named Nancy.

In about this timeframe John Buchanan Floyd took up cotton planting and the practice of law at Helena, Arkansas. He would sustain severe financial losses, and he and numerous of his black slaves would succumb to malignant fever. HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

1841

June 6, Sunday: Waldo Emerson and Henry Thoreau went boating on the Concord River.

Prideaux John Selby and Lewis Tabitha Mitford appeared in the census in Twizell House, Adderstone, Northumberland, England.

A male 9-year-old named Richard Realf who had been born in Sussex appeared in the census at Fir Cottage in the parish of Uckfield, Sussex, England. HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

1847

John Buchanan Floyd was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates.

John Brown posed holding a flag, with right hand upraised as in oathtaking, for Augustus Washington, a black Daguerreotypist of Hartford, Connecticut:1

(The Daguerreotype of Frederick Douglass at the National Portrait Gallery dates to about this year.)

At the age of 15, in England, Richard Realf began to pen verses.

Eliza Ann Whapham was born in this year at Uckfield in Sussex, to Eliza Whapham and Charles Henry Whapham.

1. You will note that, since this is a Daguerreotype, it presents a mirror image and it would thus appear to us now, who have become accustomed to positive photographs made from negatives, as if Brown had been swearing the oath of fealty using his left hand. The photo was recently purchased for the National Portrait Gallery upon a bid of $129,000, after having been for some time unlocatable. HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

1849

The poet Richard Realf became at the age of 17, tending toward his adult height of 5 feet 5 inches, amanuensis to a lady in Brighton, England. When a lecturer on phrenology, passing through this beach resort town, recited some of his poems as instances of ideality, some of the literary people of the town began to patronize his talent. When Lady Byron sent him as steward to one of her country estates, he entangled himself in an affair with 57- year-old Anne Isabella “Annabella” Noel Byron (exiled by her husband George Gordon, Lord Byron in 1816). Living well beyond his means, wandering England indulging in freakish excesses, wearing a bracelet band of her bright hair, he contracted large debts and wound up in rags, barefoot, singing ballads, offering his hat as a target for pennies pitched by passers-by in the street.

Captain Claude Minié introduced a conical soft-lead bullet with a hollow base, the virtue of which was that it would expand inside a rifled barrel to make a gas-tight seal with the rifling. By permitting this better fit, range and accuracy, and therefore killing power, was greatly increased, while lead fouling and jamming of barrels during rapid fire was greatly decreased. In addition, the bullet would fragment into shrapnel in a salutary manner as it made its way through your flesh, thus transforming all rather than merely a portion of its inertial moment into tissue damage. (And they say there is no such thing as progress! This invention would serve well during the period 1862-1865, a period during which a great many wrong people lived who deserved to die a horrible death. To assist even the slightly wounded in dying this horrible death, the little hollow in the base of this “Minny” was frequently contaminated by the righteous rifleman with fresh human feces.) Here is how this deadly device would be implemented in 1855 at the Harpers Ferry armory:

FIREARMS The federal arsenal was being beset by chronic flooding, but of course at the time no one had the slightest clue HDT WHAT? INDEX

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that this flooding was anthropogenic and would become more and more a chronic condition:

Beset by his 2d business failure, almost age 50, at this point John Brown made what was according to David Grimsted “his first sustained effort to help blacks,” by moving his family onto Gerrit Smith’s donation tract in the Adirondacks south of Lake Placid near North Elba where they could live near and give advice and counsel to black families. Grimsted charges that the folks who talk about Brown as committing his life to antislavery activism as of 1837 are placing too great emphasis upon mere pronouncements and intentions, “vague dreams” as Grimsted characterizes them — if these historians are indeed not committing the egregious error to be described as “remembering backward.” In fact although Brown had aided individuals on occasion prior to this move, and although he had opposed racial segregation in the churches attended by his family, this was the first real activism of his life. HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

(I don’t know whether the family of John Brown relocated to North Elba while he was still in Europe, or upon his return late in the year.)

At any rate, in this year John Buchanan Floyd was becoming governor of Virginia. As governor he would distinguish himself by proposing to retaliate, by placing a special tax on their products, against any state whose courts failed to be adequately enthusiastic in helping Virginians to recapture their escaping black slaves (this would be, you notice, in direct violation of Article IV, Section 1 of the US Constitution, the “Full Faith and Credit Clause” which ensures that decisions of state courts are recognized and honored in all states). HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

1852

His term as Governor of Virginia having expired, John Buchanan Floyd resumed the practice of law in Abingdon, Virginia.

Richard Realf put out a collection of poetry in Brighton and London, GUESSES AT THE BEAUTIFUL.

GUESSES AT THE BEAUTIFUL The Children. Do you love me, little children. 0 sweet blossoms that are curled (Life’s tender morning-glories) ’Round the casement of the world! Do your hearts climb up toward me. As my own heart bends to you. In the beauty of your dawning And the brightness of your dew? When the fragrance of your faces And the rhythm of your feet, And the incense of your voices Transform the sullen street. Do you see my soul move softly Forever where you move, With an eye of benediction And a guarding hand of love? O my darlings! I am with you In your troubles, in your play; In your sobbing and your singing. HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

In your dark and in your day; In the chambers where you nestle, In the hovels where you lie, In the sunlight where you blossom And the blackness where you die. Not a blessing broods above you But it lifts me from the ground; Not a thistle-barb doth sting you But I suffer with the wound; And a chord within me trembles To your lightest touch or tone, And I famish when you hunger And I shiver when you moan. * * * * I have trodden all the spaces Of my solemn years alone, And have never felt the cooing Of a babe’s breath near my own; But with more than father passion, And with more than mother pain, I have loved you, little children;— Do you love me back again?

Hymn of Pittsburgh. My father was a mighty Vulcan; I am Smith of the land and sea; The cunning spirit of Tubal-Cain Came with my marrow to me. I think great thoughts, strong-winged with steel, I coin vast iron acts, And orb the impalpable dreams of seers Into comely, lyric facts. I am monarch of all the forges, I have solved the riddle of fire; The amen of nature to cry of man Answers at my desire. I search with the subtle soul of flame The heart of the rocky earth, And hot from my anvils the prophecies Of the miracle-years leap forth. I am swart with the soot of my furnace, I drip with the sweats of toil; My fingers throttle the savage wastes, I tear the curse from the soil; I fling the bridges across the gulfs That hold us from the to-be And build the roads for the bannered march Of crowned humanity.

De Mortuis Nil Nisi Bonum. When for me this end has come and I am dead, and the little voluble, chattering daws of men HDT WHAT? INDEX

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peck at me curiously, let it then be said by some one brave enough to speak the truth: Here lies a great soul killed by cruel wrong. Down all the balmy days of his fresh youth to his bleak, desolate noon, with sword and song, and speech that rushed up hotly from the heart, he wrought for liberty, till his own wound (he had been stabbed), concealed with painful art through wasting years, mastered him, and he swooned, and sank there where you see him lying now with the word ‘Failure’ written on his brow.

But say that he succeeded. If he missed world’s honors, and world’s plaudits, and the wage of the world’s deft lacqueys, still his lips were kissed daily by those high angels who assuage the thirstings of the poets— for he was born unto singing— and a burthen lay mightily on him, and he moaned because he could not rightly utter to the day what God taught in the night. Sometimes, nathless, power fell upon him, and bright tongues of flame, and blessings reached him from poor souls in stress; and benedictions from black pits of shame, and little children’s love, and old men’s prayers, and a Great Hand that led him unawares. So he died rich. And if his eyes were blurred with big films— silence! he is in his grave. Greatly he suffered, greatly, too, he erred; yet broke his heart trying to be brave. Nor did he wait till Freedom had become the popular shibboleth of courtier’s lips; he smote for her when God Himself seemed dumb and all His arching skies were in eclipse. He was a-weary, but he fought his fight, and stood for simple manhood; and was joyed to see the august broadening of the light and new earths heaving heavenward from the void. He loved his fellows, and their love was sweet— plant daisies at his head and at his feet. HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

1853

John Buchanan Floyd was again elected to the Virginia House of Delegates.

Richard Realf spent the year in Leicestershire in England, as a student of scientific agriculture.

In the South, in Fairfield, South Carolina in the fall of 1843, one John Brown had been sentenced “to hang by the neck until your body be dead” for having aided a South Carolinian who was trying to escape from enslavement. But this had not been the famous northern interloper of 1859, Captain John Brown, this had been a man from Maine named John L. Brown. The national and international petitions for clemency in this case, flowing across the desk of Governor James Henry Hammond (1810-1864), had caused the governor to commute the sentence of death and then to respond at length in defense of the institution of chattel slavery and in opposition to the practice of slave stealing, and the Charleston SC Mercury had subsequently put his thoughts out in the form of pamphlets — and at this point they were being republished as PRO-SLAVERY ARGUMENT, and in 1860, this Southern gentleman’s responses would receive additional general publication. Meanwhile, in the North, the challenge to those Unitarian ministers who supported the Fugitive Slave Law because they supported obedience to law and/or supported the Federal Union, that they were the same as HDT WHAT? INDEX

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“traffickers IN HUMAN FLESH,” which had been initiated in the spring of 1851 by the Reverend Samuel Joseph May, came to a conclusion of sorts, with instructions going out to ministers that the debate over slavery was driving away potential converts to Unitarianism, and that therefore they should avoid discussion of the peculiar institution of slavery, avoid discussion of Daniel Webster, and avoid discussion of the merits of the Fugitive Slave Law — and that those Unitarian ministers who found themselves unable to avoid such discussion would be finding themselves out of a job.

In sum: at this juncture in the South one might lose one’s life, for opposing the Fugitive Slave Law, or in the North one might lose one’s livelihood, for opposing the Fugitive Slave Law. What would be the solution? The New-York Herald Tribune declared in favor of the deportation of American blacks to Africa, on grounds of inherent racial inferiority. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1854

Richard Realf, having given up trying to be the lover of Lady Noell Byron, widow of George Gordon, Lord Byron, came to the United States of America due to “instincts” which he characterized as “democratic and republican, or, at least, anti-monarchical.” Initially he would explore the slums of New-York, become a Five Points missionary, and assist in establishing in that slum environment a course of cheap lectures and a self- improvement association.

While touring the South as a special correspondent of the New-York Times, Frederick Law Olmsted visited a German community near Neu-Braunfels.

When no hospital in New-York would accept a female physician on its staff, Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell opened a clinic and dispensary on East 7th Street (now honored in Beth Israel Medical Center at Stuyvesant Square East and 15th Street) that would provide the poor and sick with the services of “medical practicioners [sic] of either sex.”

The Free Academy of New-York (later City College) at this point had 14 instructors and 600 students. 11,000 students were attending night classes.The municipality had a total of 224 public schools with 133,831 students enrolled, and of these public schools, 25 were for blacks and 199 were for whites.

Word came to several New-York newspapers that Daniel Sickles, first secretary to the US legation in London, had been able to introduce his mistress, New-York madame Fanny White, to Queen Victoria.

In New-York, the opening of the Academy of Music at 14th St. and Irving Place. HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

1856

October 14, Tuesday: The latest emigrant group to arrive in the Kansas Territory sent a report to Governor John W. Geary about the reception they had just received as they had attempted to enter the territory on October 10th. “Our party numbered from 200 to 300 persons, in two separate companies.... We are all actual, bona fide settlers.... The blockading of the Missouri river to free-state emigrants, and the reports which reached us in the early parts of September, to the effect that armed men were infesting and marauding the northern portions of Kansas, were the sole reasons why we came in a company and were armed.... We were stopped near the northern line of the territory by the United States troops, acting, as we understood, under the orders of one Preston, deputy United States marshal, and after stating to the officers who we were and what we had, they commenced searching our wagons (in some instances breaking open trunks and throwing bedding and wearing apparel upon the ground in the rain), taking arms from the wagons, wresting some private arms from the hand of men, carrying away a lot of sabers belonging to a gentleman in the territory, as also one and a half kegs of powder, percussion caps, and some cartridges; in consequence of which we were detained about two-thirds of a day, taken prisoners, and are now presented to you.... All we have to say is, that our mission to this territory is entirely peaceful ... we have confidence to believe that our property will be restored to us, and that all that has been wrong will be righted.” One of the signatories to this report letter was Richard Realf.

Oct. 14. A sudden change in the weather after remarkably warm and pleasant weather. Rained in the night, and finger-cold to-day. Your hands instinctively find their way to your pockets. Leaves are fast falling, and they are already past their brightness. perhaps earlier than usual (No.) on account of wet.

P.M. — To Hubbard’s Close. Huckleberries perfectly plump and fresh on the often bare bushes (always (else) red-leaved). The bare gray twigs begin to show, the leaves fast falling. The maples are nearly bare. The leaves of red maples, still bright, strew the ground, often crimson-spotted on a yellow ground, just like some apples. Pine-needles, just fallen, now make a thick carpet. Going to Laurel Glen in the hollow beyond Deep Cut Woods, I see now withered crechthites and epilobium standing thick on the bare hillside, where the hemlocks were cut, exposing the earth, though no fire has been there. They seem to require only that the earth shall be laid bare for them. In Laurel Glen, an aspen sprout which has grown seven to night feet high, its lower and larger leaves, already fallen and blackened (a dark slate), about. One green and perfect leaf measures ten inches in length and nine broad, heart-shaped. Others, less perfect, are half an inch or more larger each way. Any flowers seen now may be called late ones. I see perfectly fresh succory, not to speak of yarrow, a Viola ovata, some Polygala sanguinea, autumnal dandelion, tansy, etc., etc. HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

1857

November: There was an Underground Railroad line, the “stations” of which were Salem in Southeastern Iowa, Tabor, Lewis, Des Moines, Grinnel, Iowa City, West Liberty, Springdale (a Quaker community outside Iowa City), Tipton, Dewitt, and Clinton. During the early winter John Brown hiked crosscountry from Tabor to Springdale with his group (Brown’s son Owen Brown, John Edwin Cook, John Henry Kagi, William H. Leeman, Charles Moffett, Luke F. Parsons, Richard Realf, Richard Richardson, Aaron D. Stevens, and Charles Plummer Tidd, plus some runaway slaves). The trip required 25 days. A Quaker elder is reported to have said to Brown, “Thou art welcome to tarry among us but we have no use for thy guns.” Friend John Hunt Painter, later the founder of Pasadena, California, was the only local Quaker we now know to have had knowledge of the violence of Brown’s plan. He said, “Friend, I can’t give thee money to buy powder and lead but here’s $20 toward thy expenses.” THE QUAKER PEACE TESTIMONY

William and Delilah Maxson of North Liberty, a community about 3 miles to the northeast of Springdale, who were not Quakers, agreed to provide board for the group in their substantial home at the rate of $1.50 per week per person, not including laundry or extra candles, and to take payment not in cash but in the wagons and teams the group had been using to transport rifles and pikes. William Maxson was aware of the violence of Brown’s plan, but not being a Quaker, he had no objection. The Maxsons and the escaped slaves slept in the large cellar, and John Brown had a room on the main floor for the short intervals during which he was in town that winter, and the white men with him slept in the garret. Maria Todd, who would become the wife of Elza Maxson, also slept in that cellar during that winter. The Maxsons and Aaron D. Stevens were spiritualists. A mock legislature was staged on Tuesdays and Thursdays in the big west room of the Maxson home until so many neighbors attended that they needed to convene at the community’s brick schoolhouse. Parliamentary rules were enforced and the topics engaged with included war, partisan politics, human enslavement, political and civil rights for American blacks, college education and civil rights for women, banking laws, prohibitory liquor laws, mechanics, theology, natural philosophy, and, of course, spiritualism. During the winter the forenoons were spent in military studies and Stevens, known as Colonel Whipple, led drills in which the men carried wooden swords and pikes and maneuvered on the front lawn. The evenings were given over to reading in books such as PLUTARCH’S LIVES, writing letters, and debating. John Henry Kagi offered instruction in shorthand. That winter, Stevens was a frequent visitor at the home of Moses Varney. His daughter Anna Varney Phelps would tell of sitting on Stephens’ knee while, with tears rolling down his cheeks, he would sing in his beautiful tenor “Will they miss me at home, Mother? Will they miss me? HDT WHAT? INDEX

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November 30, Monday-December 3: Henry Thoreau surveyed, for Waldo Emerson, some woodlots at Goose Pond and Walden Pond belonging to John Richardson. His sketch showed the road leading from Lincoln to Concord Meeting (now Route 126) as it was in 1797 when the land of Duncan Ingraham, “one of the Squires of the village,” was sold to Richardson for $533.33. The land on the east side of that road had belonged to a farmer named Brister, and Thoreau wrote “Brister Lot, now the state’s because the owner, Brister, was a foreigner.”2 The sketch pinpoints Emerson’s land between Richardson’s and John Potter’s along the “Road to Wayland,” the present Walden Street. Thoreau copied a second survey of Emerson’s land made in December 1848 by Cyrus Hubbard and, at the bottom, noted that in 1791 this land had belonged to William Savage.

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/35a.htm

November 30, Monday: A still, warm, cloudy, rain-threatening day. Surveying the J. Richardson lot. The air is full of geese [Canada Goose Branta canadensis]. I saw five flocks within an hour, about 10 A.M., containing from thirty to fifty each, and afterward two more flocks, making in all from two hundred and fifty to three hundred at least, all flying southeast over Goose and Walden Ponds. The former was apparently well named Goose Pond. You first hear a faint honking from one or two in the northeast and think there are but

2. Would this be the very land on which recently they tried to erect a humongous office building, until they were stopped by the collection of money at rock concerts? Goose Pond actually was two tiny ponds, one of which has now been filled in by the Concord Town Dump:

WALDEN: Goose Pond, of small extent, is on my way to Flint’s....

GOOSE POND HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

a few wandering there, but, looking up, see forty or fifty coming on in a more or less broken harrow, wedging their way southwest. I suspect they honk more, at any rate they are more broken and alarmed, when passing over a village, and are seen falling into their ranks again, assuming the perfect harrow form. Hearing only one or two honking, even for the seventh time, you think there are but few till you see them. According to my calculation a thousand or fifteen hundred may have gone over Concord to-day. When they fly low and near, they look very black against the sky.3 Northwest of Little Goose Pond, on the edge of Mrs. Bigelow’s wood-lot, are several hornbeams (Carpinus). Looking into a cleft in one of them about three feet from the ground, which I thought might be the scar of a blazing, I found some broken kernels of corn, probably placed there by a crow or jay. This was about half a mile from a corn-field.

Just at the end of this November, in Lawrence in the Kansas Territory, Richard Realf, published poet and a correspondent for the Illinois State Gazette, was being introduced to John Brown. John E. Cook, a member of Brown’s sacred squad, would persuade this Englishman to sign up for their holy crusade. THE 2D GREAT AMERICAN DISUNION

3. I hear that one was killed by Lee in the Corner about this time. HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

1858

A portrait of the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher was painted by Frank B. Carpenter. This portrait has recently been restored and is at Duke University’s Nasher Museum: To Frank B. Carpenter, Artist, After seeing his portrait of Henry Ward Beecher

IT was thy soul’s deep reverence earned thee this, And not thy painter’s cunning, — the true eye, Bathed in the light of shining prophecy, To understand the spiritual influences Wherefrom do spring the wonderful mysteries Of the high speech of features! Else, whence came The silent subtle aroma that grows Like the utter sweetness of a perfect rose To the hearts of the beholders, and the flame Clasping his brows with the old tenderness, So that once more we part our lips to bless The yearning face we look on, and pass forth Watching the glorious bountiful sun caress The people swarming on the rugged earth. — Richard Realf HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

May 8, Saturday-10, Monday: In Chatham, in the district now known as Ontario but then known as Canada West, where there was a large population of former American slaves, John Brown announced to a secret “convention” of Negroes and whites he had organized, at the home of Mary Ann Shadd Cary’s brother Issac

Shadd, that he intended to establish a stronghold in the Maryland and Virginia mountains for the shelter of escaping slaves. This was referred to as the Subterranean Pass Way scheme.

George J. Reynolds had come up from Ohio to Brown’s assembly in the company of James Henry Harris and Osborn Perry Anderson (G.J. Reynolds would sign the document as “J.G. Reynolds,” an alteration that was not unusual due to his cautious nature).

A provisional constitution was adopted for the new government of the United States of America. The Reverend William Charles Munroe of the 2d Baptist Church of Detroit, Dr. Martin Robison Delany, and several other influential black leaders were among those who voted their approval of this “Provisional Constitution and Ordinances for the people of the United States,” the charter formal of the fugitive society to be created in the remote fastnesses of the Alleghenies. (Delany would in 1868 allege that he had known nothing of the plan for the raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, but others who had also been present at these meetings would mock such claims of ignorance.) Then it was decided that the flag for this new society would be the original flag used during the American Revolution, Captain Brown was voted to be commander HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

in chief of this scheme, John Henry Kagi became his secretary of war, George B. Gill became his secretary of the treasury, and Richard Realf became his secretary of state. They had trouble finding a black leader willing

to assume the dicey role of President of this new society, so it was decided to replace the function of a president, temporarily, with a 15-person council headed by Commander-in-Chief Brown. PROVISIONAL CONSTITUTION PROVISIONAL CONSTITUTION

What follows is a list of the signatories to Captain Brown’s “Provisional Constitution and Ordinances for the People of the United States,” from a document in Brown’s handwriting that would be captured when he and his men were subdued at Harpers Ferry on October 18, 1859. We do not know what subsequently happened to the original document in Brown’s handwriting, but the list was transcribed and published as Record Group 46 among the documents of the Senate investigating committee in 1860. Also, a list of signatories and the Minutes of the Convention would be published in 1861 in Osborne Anderson’s A VOICE FROM HARPERS FERRY: HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

CHATHAM SIGNATORIES

Person’s Name On Raid? Shot Dead? Hanged? His Function Age Race

George Akin (Aikens) No No No recruit of color

George Akin (Aikens), eventually of the 102d US Colored Infantry that formed in Michigan by George DeBaptiste and included many men from Chatham, a musician

Robinson Alexander (possibly) No No No recruit of color

Robinson Alexander (possibly), eventually of the 102d US Colored Infantry that formed in Michigan by George DeBaptiste and included many men from Chatham (name transposed)

Jeremiah Goldsmith Anderson Yes Yes Captain or Lt. 26 white

The maternal grandfather of Jeremiah Goldsmith Anderson, Colonel Jacob Westfall of Tygert Valley, Virginia, had been a soldier in the revolution and a slaveholder. Jeremiah had gone to school at Galesburg, Illinois and Kossuth, Iowa and had worked as a peddler, farmer, and sawmill laborer before settling a mile from Fort Bain on the Little Osage in Bourbon County in “Bleeding Kansas” during August 1857. He had twice been arrested by proslavery activists, and had been held for 10 weeks at Fort Scott. He then became a lieutenant of Captain Montgomery and was with him in the attack on Captain Anderson’s troop of the 1st US Cavalry. He witnessed a murder, of a Mr. Denton, on his own doorstep by border ruffians. He went with John Brown on the slave raid into Missouri and remained with him thereafter. He was “J. Anderson” among the signatories to “Provisional Constitution and Ordinances for the People of the United States,” from a document in Brown’s handwriting that would be captured when he and his men were subdued at Harpers Ferry on October 18th, 1859. On July 5th, 1859 this 27-year-old had written of his determination to continue to fight for freedom: “Millions of fellow-beings require it of us; their cries for help go out to the universe daily and hourly. Whose duty is it to help them? Is it yours? Is it mine? It is every man’s, but how few there are to help. But there are a few who dare to answer this call and dare to answer it in a manner that will make this land of liberty and equality shake to the centre.” He was thrust through with a bayonet by one of the Marines, and pinned against the wall “vomiting gore.” A white man, he was tortured because he was perceived by the attackers as a light mulatto: “One of the prisoners described Anderson as turning completely over against the wall [to which he was pinned by the bayonet] in his dying agony. He lived a short time, stretched on the brick walk without, where he was subjected to savage brutalities, being kicked in body and face, while one brute of an armed farmer spat a huge quid of tobacco from his vile jaws into the mouth of the dying man, which he first forced open.” A local commented “Well, it takes you a hell of a long time to die.” When opportunistic medical students would go to transport the remains to their college in Winchester, Virginia for dissection, their treatment of this corpse was so casual as to be recorded by a bystander: “In order to take him away handily they procured a barrel and tried to pack him into it. Head foremost, they rammed him in, but they could not bend his legs so as to get them into the barrel with the rest of the body. In their endeavor to accomplish this feat, they strained so hard that the man’s bones or sinews fairly cracked.” His remains were taken to the college along with the remains of Watson Brown (a corpse found on the banks of the Shenandoah River was more likely that of a local slave). HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

CHATHAM SIGNATORIES

Person’s Name On Raid? Shot Dead? Hanged? His Function Age Race

Osborn Perry Anderson Yes No No Private 29 of color

Osborn Perry Anderson, “O.P. Anderson, or as we used to call him Chatham Anderson,” the only participant of color to survive Harpers Ferry and elude capture, had been born free on July 27, 1830 in West Fallowfield, Pennsylvania. He had learned the printing trade in Canada, where he had met John Brown in 1858. He was a member of Congress of John Brown’s Provisional Government in Chatham, Ontario in May 1858 and was “Osborn Anderson” on the list of signatories of the “Provisional Constitution and Ordinances for the People of the United States”; a member of the Vigilance Committee in Chatham and Windsor in September 1858. He would write later of the fight at Harpers Ferry and his escape in A VOICE FROM HARPER’S FERRY: “We were together eight days before [John Edwin Cook and Albert Hazlett were] captured, which was near Chambersburg, and the next night Meriam [Francis Jackson Meriam] left us and went to Shippensburg, and there took cars for Philadelphia. After that there were but three of us left [Brown’s son Owen Brown, Barclay Coppoc, and Charles Plummer Tidd], and we kept together, until we got to Centre County, Pennsylvania, where we bought a box and packed up all heavy luggage, such as rifles, blankets, etc., and after being together three or four weeks we separated….” Anderson, Coppoc, and Meriam had journeyed separately to safe exile in the area of St. Catharines, Canada. Anderson enlisted in the US Army in 1864, becoming a recruiter and/or noncommissioned officer for a unit as yet undetermined, and mustered out in Washington DC at the close of the war (he would be identified by his father Vincent Anderson in 1872 as having been a recruiter for the “western regiments”). He was a member of the Equal Rights League in 1865, and represented Michigan at the National Convention of Colored Men in 1869. He died a pauper of TB and lack of care in Washington on December 13, 1872.

M(atisen, or Madison) F. Bailey No No No recruit of color

M(atisen, or Madison) F. Bailey, a member of the African Commission of 1858 for emigration to the African continent, based on Martin M. Delany’s notion “the making of a colored nationality”

James M(adison) Bell No No No recruit of color

James M(adison) Bell, a member of the African Commission of 1858 for emigration to the African continent, based on Martin M. Delany’s notion “the making of a colored nationality”; a member of the Vigilance Committee in Chatham and Windsor in September 1858; California, 1865

John Brown Yes Multiple Yes Commander white wounds

John Brown, “Captain” John “Nelson Hawkins” “Shubel Morgan” “Isaac Smith” Brown.

Owen Brown Yes No No Captain 35 white HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

CHATHAM SIGNATORIES

Person’s Name On Raid? Shot Dead? Hanged? His Function Age Race

Owen Brown, 3d of John Brown’s sons and his stalwart aid both in “Bleeding Kansas” and at Harper’s Ferry, was born November 4, 1824 at Hudson, Ohio. With a withered arm, he had been attempting to make a career of writing humor articles for newspapers. His name was among the signatories to “Provisional Constitution and Ordinances for the People of the United States,” from a document in Brown’s handwriting that would be captured when he and his men were subdued at Harpers Ferry on October 18, 1859. He was 35 at the time of the Harpers Ferry raid. He escaped on foot toward the northwestern part of Pennsylvania. It was due largely to his psychological grit and his endurance that the little group of survivors of which he was the leader managed to make it out. He and Charles Plummer Tidd found work and safety under assumed names on an oil-well crew in Crawford County, Pennsylvania. He was the only one of the 5 escaped raiders not to participate in the civil war. He would never marry. He would grow grapes for some time in Ohio in association with 2 of his brothers, and then migrate west, and would be the final survivor of the raiders when he would die on January 9, 1891 at his mountain home “Brown’s Peak” near Pasadena, California. A marble monument marked the mountain grave, until during July 2002 it mysteriously disappeared — since the grave was not a registered historical landmark, and not in a cemetery, there would be no investigation.

Thomas F. Cary No No No recruit of color

Thomas F. Cary, a member of the Vigilance Committee in Chatham and Windsor in September 1858, husband of Mary Ann Shadd, died in 1860

John Connel (Caunel) No No No recruit of color

John Connel (Caunel), private in Company A of the 113th US Colored Infantry that was formed from the 13th US Colored Infantry that was recruited in and spent its entire service in Arkansas

John E. Cook Yes No Yes Captain 29 white HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

CHATHAM SIGNATORIES

Person’s Name On Raid? Shot Dead? Hanged? His Function Age Race

John Edwin Cook, a well-connected 5'7" gentleman with blue eyes and long, curly blond hair, born during Summer 1830 to a well-to-do family in Haddam, Connecticut, had been a law clerk in Brooklyn and Manhattan after being expelled from Yale College on account of some student indiscretion, and had in 1855 become a member of the guerrilla force operated out of Lawrence in “Bleeding Kansas” by Charles Lenhart and had made himself an excellent shot. The name “John E. Cook” was among the signatories to “Provisional Constitution and Ordinances for the People of the United States,” from a document in Brown’s handwriting that would be captured when he and his men were subdued at Harpers Ferry on October 18th, 1859. He had been dispatched by John Brown to Harpers Ferry more than a year before the raid to work out the details on the ground and had secured employment as a lock tender on the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal, as a schoolteacher, and as a bookseller. He had gotten married with a Chambersburg, Pennsylvania woman, Mary V. Kennedy, on April 18th, 1859. After being sent out by Captain Brown to collect weapons, and having escaped by climbing into a tree and watching the events transpire, and after having evaded capture for some months, against the advice of his comrades he became reckless in his search for food and was captured on October 25th, 8 miles from Chambersburg. As an incessant and compulsive communicator he had always been considered by the Brown operatives to be indiscreet. In a confession which would be published as a pamphlet at Charles Town in the middle of November 1859 for the benefit of Samuel C. Young, a man who had been crippled for life in the fighting, Cook would detail for his captors all his movements from the point of his 1st meeting with Brown after the battle of Black Jack in June 1856 until after his capture. At the last moment he would seek to save himself by representing that he had been deceived through false promises. For this revelation Cook would be severely censured at the time, being termed “Judas.” Despite his confession, and despite his brother-in-law A.P. Willard being the governor of Indiana, he would in the end, one of the last, be also hanged for treason and murder at Harpers Ferry, on December 16th.

Martin Robison Delany No No No Supporter of color

Dr. Martin Robison Delany, Pennsylvania, 1843; attended the Colored National Convention of 1848; attended the Emigration Convention of 1854; a member of the Niger Valley Exploring Party in 1858; a member of the Vigilance Committee in Chatham and Windsor in September 1858. At a meeting of the conspirators in Chatham in Canada West in May 1858, “M.R. Delany,” the Reverend William Charles Munroe of Detroit, and several other leaders of the large black expatriate community approved something termed the “Provisional Constitution and Ordinances for the people of the United States,” as the charter for the pike-wielding fugitive society of raiders which was to be created in the remote fastness of the Allegheny Mountains by Captain John Brown subsequent to his raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. That document would be discovered on Brown’s person when he was taken into custody. He would be a Major in the 104th Colored Infantry, and Sub-Assistant Commissioner of the Freedmen’s Bureau in South Carolina, in 1865. He was a Freemason.

Stephen Ditten (Dutton), alias No No No recruit of color Chitman

Stephen Ditten (Dutton), alias Chitman, private in Company H of the 102d US Colored Infantry that was formed in Michigan by George DeBaptiste and included many men from Chatham HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

CHATHAM SIGNATORIES

Person’s Name On Raid? Shot Dead? Hanged? His Function Age Race

Alfred M. Ellsworth No No No recruit of color

Alfred M. Ellsworth, Member of Congress from Illinois in 1853

Simon Fisher (Fislin) No No No recruit of color

Simon Fisher (Fislin), member of the 1st Regiment of US Colored Infantry

George B. Gill

George B. Gill had come to “Bleeding Kansas” in 1857 after whaling in the Pacific Ocean, and had there been recruited by John Brown. His name was among the signatories to “Provisional Constitution and Ordinances for the People of the United States,” from a document in Brown’s handwriting that would be captured when he and his men were subdued at Harpers Ferry on October 18th, 1859. He alarmed other conspirators by conducting himself in such manner as to attract attention and arouse suspicion, for instance displaying weapons, bragging to lady friends that he had been in Kansas and had killed 5 men, informing other boarders at his lodgings that he was in town on a secret expedition with other fighters, who were under his command, etc. During the year before the raid, Captain Brown sent Gill to visit a black con artist named Mr. Reynolds who persuaded Gill that he had gone through the South organizing and had brought into existence in areas of the South a militant organization of black men and women. Pointing out to Gill that Southern newspapers carried numerous references to the death of a favorite slave, he alleged that these were leaders of servile insurrection plots who were being discovered and offed. According to this “mumper” Southern blacks were ready and needed only to be given a cue. There is evidence that several slaves from the vicinity of the arsenal did participate in the raid itself, but returned hastily to their plantations when it became obvious that the raid was a failure. Several fires were set in the vicinity of Harpers Ferry in the week after the raid, probably by slaves and free black Americans (Richard Hinton estimates that $10,000,000 was lost in the sale of Virginia slaves in the year 1859; census figures show that between 1850 and 1860 there was almost a 10% decline in blacks in the three counties surrounding Harpers Ferry, a period during which the total number of blacks in Maryland and Virginia was increasing by about 4%).

Henry Harris No No No recruit of color

Henry Harris, of Cleveland in 1859

James Henry Harris HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

CHATHAM SIGNATORIES

Person’s Name On Raid? Shot Dead? Hanged? His Function Age Race

No one associated with Captain John Brown, and no one associated with politics in North Carolina, has ever been awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. “J.H. Harris” signed, as a member of a Vigilance Committee, on May 8th, 1858, the “Provisional Constitution and Ordinances for the People of the United States” in Chatham, Ontario West, Canada, a document which would be found on the person of John Brown when he was captured at Harpers Ferry on October 18th, 1859. Although another person of this name, James Henry Harris, had been born a slave in Granville County, North Carolina and had gained his freedom at the age of 18 in about 1848, he was not this “J.H. Harris.” Educated at Oberlin College, he would hold a teaching certificate from the New England Freedman’s Aid Society. He was of Cleveland in 1859, and a member of the 102d US Colored Infantry formed in Michigan by George DeBaptiste that included so many men from Chatham. He would attend the 1st Freedmen’s Convention in the South, held in what would become the St. Paul A.M.E. Church on Edenton Street in Raleigh during September 1865 as a representative of Wake County. He would become the 1st black alderman from Raleigh, and a delegate from Raleigh to the North Carolina Constitutional Convention of 1868; he got married with Bettie Miller, a daughter of Addison J. Smith and Mary Anderson, a cousin of Osborn Perry Anderson; he died in 1891 in Washington DC and the remains are at Mount Hope Cemetery in Raleigh. There is yet a 3d James H. Harris, who was not this “J.H. Harris” signatory, who was belatedly awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor and is interred in the remote section of Arlington National Cemetery that was reserved for colored soldiers, and for contrabands.

Thomas Hickerson No No No recruit of color

Thomas Hickerson, corporal in Company D of the 13th US Colored Infantry

Isaac Hobbar (Holler; Isaac No No No recruit of color Holden)

Isaac Hobbar (Holler; Isaac Holden), probably a member of the 102d US Colored Infantry under the name Isaac Horden, that formed in Michigan by George DeBaptiste and included many men from Chatham

S(quire) Hunton AKA Esquire No No No recruit of color Hunter

S(quire) Hunton AKA Esquire Hunter, commissary sergeant of Company H in the 109th US Colored Infantry

Job (or John) T. Jackson No No No recruit of color

Job (or John) T. Jackson, Corporal in Company F of the 13th US Colored Infantry

James Monroe Jones No No No recruit of color

James Monroe Jones, Chatham resident, owned a gun shop

John Henry Kagi Yes Yes Secretary of War, 24 white adjutant HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

CHATHAM SIGNATORIES

Person’s Name On Raid? Shot Dead? Hanged? His Function Age Race

Although John Henry Kagi, AKA Maurice Maitland, AKA John Henrie, was largely self-taught, his letters to the New-York Tribune, the New-York Evening Post, and the National Era reveal him as the best educated of the raiders. A debater, public speaker, stenographer, wannabee writer, and total abstainer from alcohol, he was cold in manner and rough in appearance. A nonparticipant in organized religion, he was an able man of business. He had been born on March 15, 1835, a son of the blacksmith for Bristolville, Ohio in a family of Swiss descent (the name originally having been Kagy). During 1854/1855 he had taught school at Hawkinstown, Virginia but had indicated an objection to the system of slavery there and been compelled to return to Ohio with a pledge never to return. He had gone to Nebraska City in 1856 and been admitted to the bar. He then entered Kansas with one of General James H. Lane’s parties and enlisted in Aaron D. Stevens’s (“Colonel Whipple’s”) 2d Kansas Militia. In fighting in the town of Tecumseh in “Bleeding Kansas” he proved himself by killing at least one man, who had been coming after him with a club. After being captured by US troops he had been imprisoned at Lecompton and at Tecumseh, but was finally released. On January 31, 1857 he had been struck on the head with a gold-headed cane by a slaveowning territorial judge, drew his revolver and shot the judge in the groin, but Judge Physic Rush Elmore got off 3 shots and one struck Kagi over the heart, the bullet being stopped by a memorandum-book. He was long with his family in Ohio recovering from these wounds, but then returned to Kansas and joined John Brown. He bore the title of Secretary of War in the provisional government and was next in command to John Brown; he was also the adjutant. His name was among the signatories to “Provisional Constitution and Ordinances for the People of the United States,” from a document in Brown’s handwriting that would be captured when he and his men were subdued at Harpers Ferry on October 18, 1859. When in Chambersburg as agent for the raiders, he boarded with Mrs. Mary Rittner. “In a very few days we shall commence,” he wrote on the eve of the raid, “things could not be more cheerful and more certain of success than they are. We have worked hard and suffered much, but the hardest is down now, and a glorious success is in sight.... Be cheerful. Don’t imagine dangers. All will be well.” At Harpers Ferry he was trapped along with John Anderson Copeland, Jr. and Lewis Sheridan Leary in the armory called Hall’s Rifle Works. When the 3 made a run for it, heading down to the Shenandoah River, they got caught in crossfire and Kagi was the first killed, shot in the head, his body being left to float in the river.

Thomas M. Kinnard No No No recruit of color

Thomas M. Kinnard, attended the Colored National Convention in Syracuse, New York of June 1855, organized by Gerrit Smith, James McCune Smith, and Frederick Douglass; member of the 19th US Colored Infantry; a Freemason

William Lambert No No No recruit of color

William Lambert, of Detroit, Michigan in 1843; member of the African Mysteries, a secret defense group in Michigan in 1858; Equal Rights League 1865; a Freemason; Convention delegate closely associated with George DeBaptiste

John Lawrence No No No recruit of color

John Lawrence, an officer of the Provisional Constitution; a member of Congress of John Brown’s Provisional Government HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

CHATHAM SIGNATORIES

Person’s Name On Raid? Shot Dead? Hanged? His Function Age Race

William H. Leeman Yes Yes Captain < 21 white

William H. Leeman was of a wild disposition. Educated in the public schools of Saco and Hallowell, Maine, by the age of 14 he was working in a shoe factory in Haverhill, Massachusetts. He went to “Bleeding Kansas” with the 2d batch of recruits from Massachusetts, and on September 9, 1856 became a member of Captain John Brown’s “Volunteer Regulars.” He fought well at Osawatomie when but 17 years of age. At Springdale, Iowa, Owen Brown found him full of swagger and bluster and difficult to control George B. Gill said of him that he had “a good intellect with great ingenuity.” He signed “W.H. Leeman” to “Provisional Constitution and Ordinances for the People of the United States,” per a document in Brown’s handwriting that would be captured when the raiders were subdued at Harpers Ferry. By the raid upon Harpers Ferry he had reached the age of 20, the youngest of the raiders. He wrote his mother, “I shall be in danger, but it is natural to me. I shall not get killed. I am in a good cause, and I am not afraid.” He made a mad dash out of the relative safety of the armory to attempt to escape by swimming down the Potomac River, where two militiamen caught up with him and shot him down on an islet. For hours his corpse would be used for target practice by drunken citizens, until their hail of bullets pushed the riddled remains into a current that drew it along until only his black hair could be glimpsed in the ripples on the surface. Mrs. Annie Brown Adams would write of him: “He was only a boy. He smoked a good deal and drank sometimes; but perhaps people would not think that so very wicked now. He was very handsome and very attractive.”

Charles W. Moffett Yes white

We believe that the name of Charles W. Moffett of Iowa was among the signatories to Chatham, Ontario’s “Provisional Constitution and Ordinances for the People of the United States” as “C.W. Moffit,” per a document in Brown’s handwriting that would be captured when he and his men were subdued at Harpers Ferry on October 18, 1859. Perhaps this “W” stood for “Wesley,” if we can rely upon a tombstone in the Maple Hill cemetery in Montour, Iowa (“Charles Wesley Moffett / Jun. 20, 1827-Aug. 19, 1904”). We wonder if perhaps he did not attend the raid on the federal arsenal because he got cold feet, or perhaps because he was one of a number of people suspected by the others of having written to alert Secretary of War John Buchanan Floyd to the plan for a raid on a federal arsenal (the Cabinet member received these warnings while at Red Sweet Springs in Virginia and neglected to alert anyone to be on the lookout for such an attack — he would remind people later that as War Secretary he had been getting a whole lot of spurious warnings).

William Charles Munroe No No No recruit of color (Munro)

William Charles Munroe (Munro), Michigan, 1843, President of the Chatham Convention, active underground railroad leader in Detroit; minister; a Freemason

Robert Newman No No No recruit of color

Robert Newman HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

CHATHAM SIGNATORIES

Person’s Name On Raid? Shot Dead? Hanged? His Function Age Race

Luke F. Parsons White

Luke Fisher Parsons was a free-state fighter seasoned in “Bleeding Kansas.” He took part in the battle of Black Jack near Baldwin City on June 2d, 1856, the battle of Osawatomie on August 30th, 1856, and the raid on Iowa during Winter 1857/1858. His name “L.F. Parsons” was among the signatories to “Provisional Constitution and Ordinances for the People of the United States,” per a document in John Brown’s handwriting that would be captured when the raiders were subdued at Harpers Ferry. He had gone off toward a supposed Colorado gold rush and, summoned by letters from Brown and Kagi, did not manage to make it back to take part in the raid on the federal arsenal, or to attempt to rescue the prisoners once they were waiting to be hanged, at the jail in Charlestown, Virginia. He started a family and lived out a long life as a farmer in Salina, Kansas.

James Purnell No No No recruit of color

James Purnell, Ohio, 1850, 1851; a member of the African Commission of 1858 for emigration to the African continent, based on Martin M. Delany’s notion “the making of a colored nationality”; Pennsylvania, 1865, nephew of William Whipper of the underground railroad

Richard Realf No No No assistant 23 White

Richard Realf, English poet, was the son of a blacksmith who had become a rural constable. In 1852 he had published GUESSES AT THE BEAUTIFUL and in 1854, after giving up being the lover of George Gordon, Lord Byron’s aging widow Lady Noell Byron, he had been led to the United States of America by “instincts” he characterized as “democratic and republican, or, at least, anti-monarchical.” At the end of November or beginning of December 1857 he had been introduced to John Brown in Mount Tabor, Iowa by John Edwin Cook, whom he had met in Lawrence in “Bleeding Kansas” while working as a correspondent for the Illinois State Gazette. He traveled through Chicago and Detroit to Chatham, Ontario West, Canada and signed the “Provisional Constitution and Ordinances for the People of the United States,” per a document in Brown’s handwriting found when the survivors were subdued at Harpers Ferry on October 18th, 1859. By reading a book of ethical philosophy written by the President of Brown University, he determined that this violent agenda, and radical abolitionism in general, were a wrong path, and so he returned to England to lecture, and visited France. He embarked at Le Havre on March 2d, 1859, arriving at New Orleans on April 17th, 1959 with the intention of becoming a Jesuit priest, then with an aim to join the Shakers, and made no further contact with Captain Brown. After the raid he would voluntarily testify before the US Senate Committee and then enlist in a regiment of the Union Army.

James Redpath HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

CHATHAM SIGNATORIES

Person’s Name On Raid? Shot Dead? Hanged? His Function Age Race

James Redpath, crusading journalist out to make a buck in the best way. –Panderer in the pornography of armchair violence, at first in regard to the horrors of Southern slavery, –then in regard to the horrors of “Bleeding Kansas” –then in regard to the horrors of starving Ireland. Finally, after the Civil War, without fresh horrors to proffer to his armchair audience, he would resort to publishing defamatory doggerel poetry — lines in which he age-shames and fat-shames various Boston society ladies. –Never a dull moment for this “tell it like it is” dude! The Charleston, Virginia hangman sent him a piece of the scaffold, for which he devised a label: “A Bit of the True Cross, a Chip from the Scaffold of John Brown.”

George J. Reynolds of color

George J. Reynolds was a light mulatto with native American as well as black African heritage, a blacksmith or coppersmith, from Virginia although claiming to be from Vermont, aged about 35 at the time of the raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, and active in the Underground Railroad. He attended the Convention of Colored Men in 1858, and signed the “Provisional Constitution and Ordinances for the People of the United States” in Chatham, Ontario West, Canada per a document in John Brown’s handwriting that would be captured when he and his men were subdued on October 18th, 1859, as “J.G. Reynolds” (3 weeks after signing on to this conspiracy he was disclosing some of Captain Brown’s agenda to a black secret paramilitary group at the Masonic Lodge of his home town, Sandusky, Ohio).

Richard Richardson No of color

Richard Richardson, a fugitive slave from Lexington, Missouri who had joined John Brown in southern Iowa, was going through that unfortunate but now-well-understood initial period of reaction to freedom in which a former slave, accustomed to servitude and unaccustomed to self-origination, attaches himself to some authoritative white man who is able with courtesy to make use of him. He was a member of the African Mysteries, a secret defense group in Michigan in 1858, and signed the “Provisional Constitution and Ordinances for the People of the United States” in Chatham, per a document in Brown’s handwriting that would be captured when he and his men were subdued at Harpers Ferry on October 18, 1859, but evidently did not get from Ontario to Virginia due to lack of travel money. He became a private in Company E of the 113th US Colored Infantry that was formed from the 13th US Colored Infantry that was recruited in and spent its entire service in Arkansas.

I(saac) D. Shadd No No No recruit of color

I(saac) D. Shadd, a member of the African Commission of 1858 for emigration to the African continent, based on Martin M. Delany’s notion “the making of a colored nationality”; a member of the Vigilance Committee in Chatham and Windsor in September 1858; Speaker of the House of Representatives of Mississippi in 1870/1871

A(ddison) J. Smith No No No recruit of color HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

CHATHAM SIGNATORIES

Person’s Name On Raid? Shot Dead? Hanged? His Function Age Race

A(ddison) J. Smith, husband of Osborn P. Anderson’s cousin Mary Anderson; a member of the 28th US Colored Infantry formed in Indiana that was recruited by Mary Ann Shadd, James Henry Harris, and Willis Revels (1st cousin of Lewis Leary), whose chaplain was Garland White of Chatham (the 28th is of special interest due to the fact that more than half the men were recruited in Ellicott Mills, Maryland, near the location of Captain John Brown’s farmhouse headquarters), or the 113th US Colored Infantry that was formed from the 13th US Colored Infantry that was recruited in and spent its entire service in Arkansas

Charles Smith No No No recruit of color

Charles Smith, a member of the 28th US Colored Infantry formed in Indiana that was recruited by Mary Ann Shadd, James Henry Harris, and Willis Revels (1st cousin of Lewis Leary), whose chaplain was Garland White of Chatham, or 109th, or 127th US Colored Infantry (all these included friends of John Brown and Osborne P. Anderson)

James Smith No No No recruit of color

James Smith, a member of the 113th US Colored Infantry that was formed from the 13th US Colored Infantry that was recruited in and spent its entire service in Arkansas

Aaron Dwight Stevens Yes Badly Yes Captain 28 white wounded

Aaron Dwight Stevens, John Brown’s drillmaster, born in Lisbon, Connecticut on March 15th, 1831, was of old Puritan stock, his great-grandfather having served as a captain during the Revolutionary. He had run away from home in 1847 at the age of 16 to serve with a Massachusetts volunteer regiment during the Mexican War. Well over 6 feet tall, he made himself proficient with the sword. Enlisting in Company F of the 1st US Dragoons, at Taos during May 1855 he received a sentence of death for “mutiny, engaging in a drunken riot, and assaulting Major George A.H. Blake.” This was commuted by President Franklin Pierce to 3 years hard labor but he escaped from Fort Leavenworth in 1856, 1st finding refuge with the Delaware tribe and then joining the Kansas Free State militia of James Lane under the name “Whipple.” He became Colonel of the 2d Kansas Militia and met Brown on August 7th, 1856 at the Nebraska line when Lane’s Army of the North marched into “Bleeding Kansas”. He became a devoted follower. He was a spiritualist. At Harpers Ferry, when Brown sent this middleaged man out along with his son Watson Brown to negotiate under a flag of truce, he received 4 bullets but was taken alive. The never- married Stevens had a relationship with Rebecca B. Spring of the Eagleswood social experiment near Perth Amboy, New Jersey, and after his execution on March 16th would be buried there alongside Albert Hazlett. According to George B. Gill, writing after his death, “Stevens — how gloriously he sang! His was the noblest soul I ever knew. Though owing to his rash, hasty way, I often found occasion to quarrel with him more so than with any of the others, and though I liked [John Henry Kagi] better than any man I ever knew, our temperaments being adapted to each other, yet I can truly say that Stevens was the most noble man that I ever knew.” He was hanged on March 16th, 1860.

Thomas Stringer No No No recruit of color HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

CHATHAM SIGNATORIES

Person’s Name On Raid? Shot Dead? Hanged? His Function Age Race

Thomas Stringer, represented Mississippi at the National Convention of Colored Men in 1869; a Freemason (he would organize “Negro Masonry” in Mississippi following the Civil War)

Stewart Taylor Yes Yes Private 23 white

Stewart Taylor was born on October 29th, 1836 at Uxbridge in Canada. He became a wagonmaker and in 1853 went to Iowa, where in 1858 he became acquainted with Captain Brown through George B. Gill. He was a very good phonographer [stenographer], rapid and accurate. A spiritualist, he confidently predicted his own death. He signed the “Provisional Constitution and Ordinances for the People of the United States” in Chatham, Ontario, Canada West per a document in Brown’s handwriting that would be captured when he and his men were subdued at Harpers Ferry on October 18, 1859. A relative, Jacob L. Taylor of Pine Orchard, Canada West, wrote to Richard J. Hinton on April 23d, 1860 that he had been “heart and soul in the anti-slavery cause.” An excellent debater and very fond of studying history, he stayed at home in Canada during Winter 1858/1859 and then went to Chicago, thence to Bloomington, Illinois and thence to Harper’s [sic] Ferry.” While out of touch with the John Brown movement, the 23-year-old had feared being left behind: “I felt as though I was deprived of my chief object in life.... I believe that fate has decreed me for this undertaking.... It is my chief desire to add fuel to the fire.” When mortally wounded in the engine house, begging to be put out of his misery, Brown instructed him “Die like a man.” What remained of his corpse would be recovered in 1899 from a soggy group pit near the Shenandoah River above Harpers Ferry.

John A. Thomas No No No recruit of color

John A. Thomas

Charles Plummer Tidd Yes No No Captain 25 white HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

CHATHAM SIGNATORIES

Person’s Name On Raid? Shot Dead? Hanged? His Function Age Race

Charles Plummer Tidd was born in Palermo, Maine on January 1st, 1834 and had emigrated to “Bleeding Kansas” in 1856 with the party of Dr. Calvin Cutter of Worcester in search of excitement. After joining John Brown’s party at Mount Tabor, Iowa in 1857 he became one of the followers of “Shubel Morgan” who returned in 1858 to raid into Missouri. During the Winter 1857/1858 encampment of the Brown forces in Springdale, Iowa, he “ruined” a Quaker girl and the other members of the team had to sneak him away during the night. Nevertheless, the group obtained some recruits not overly impressed with the Peace Testimony of George Fox from among the residents of this town, such as the brothers Barclay Coppoc and Edwin Coppoc. He and John E. Cook were particularly warm friends. He signed, as “Charles P. Tidd,” the “Provisional Constitution and Ordinances for the People of the United States” in Chatham, Canada per a document in Brown’s handwriting that would be captured when he and his men were subdued at Harpers Ferry on October 18th, 1859. He opposed the attack on Harpers Ferry but nevertheless took part both in the raid on the planter Washington’s home and on the federal arsenal itself, escaped, and made his way on foot toward the northwestern part of Pennsylvania. He and John Brown’s son Owen Brown would find work and safety, under assumed names, on an oil well in the vicinity of Crawford County, Pennsylvania. He visited Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Canada and took part in the planning for the rescue of Aaron D. Stevens and Albert Hazlett while the Mason Commission of the Congress was presuming that he had been killed in the fighting at Harpers Ferry. According to Mrs. Annie Brown Adams, “Tidd had not much education, but good common sense. After the raid he began to study, and tried to repair his deficiencies. He was by no means handsome. He had a quick temper, but was kind-hearted. His rages soon passed and then he tried all he could to repair damages. He was a fine singer and of strong family affections.” On July 19th, 1861 he was able to enlist under the name “Charles Plummer” and would become a 1st Sergeant of the 21st Massachusetts Volunteers. On February 8th, 1862 he died of fever aboard the transport Northerner during the battle of Roanoke Island. (This was a battle he had particularly wished to take part in because ex-Governor Henry A. Wise of Virginia, the nemesis of the Harpers Ferry raiders, was in command of the Confederates.) Tidd’s, or Charles Plummer’s, grave is #40 in the National Cemetery in New Berne, North Carolina. THE QUAKER PEACE TESTIMONY

Robert Van Vruken No No No recruit of color

Robert Van Vruken (Van Ranken), a black community leader in Buxton, Ontario; interviewed by US Senate Committee (although of course they could not include the testimony of a black man in their official report)

Alfred Whipper No No No recruit of color

Alfred Whipper (often written “Whipple”), a member of the African Commission of 1858 for emigration to the African continent, based on Martin M. Delany’s notion “the making of a colored nationality”

C. (Aaron Stevens) Whipple No No No recruit white

C. (Aaron Stevens) Whipple HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

May 31, Monday: Richard Realf wrote from Cleveland, Ohio to “Uncle” (that would be John Brown), regarding the prospect that he and George B. Gill, John Henry Kagi, etc. would be arrested, and about expenses. He reported that their activities were no longer a total secret because “a certain Mr Reynolds (colored) who attended our convention ... has disclosed its objects to the members of a secret society (colored) called ‘The American Mysteries’ or some other confounded humbug.” Cleveland, Ohio May 31st 1858 Dear Uncle. An hour after I had mailed my brief note to you, George Gill returned from Sandusky, and Mr Thomas & Dick from the Shaker Settlement where I left them yesterday. The latter has suffered himself to be infected by a dread of arrest or some other precious nightmare, and so refused to remain here. He (with Mr Thomas) has returned to Canada tonight starting about an hour ago. – He says he will write me immediately he locates himself, and will hold himself subject to your order. I declined to advance money for their passage; but paid for their supper here. - I have paid George Gill: [Luke Fisher] Parsons has handed me a statement of your indebtedness to him, amounting to $31.85, up to yesterday morning. – The total amt of my owe, and 3 companions expenses here, with drayage, storage on boat over Sunday, breakfast yesterday for self and 2 others, with supper for them tonight is $18.62, leaving $1.38 out of the money you gave me. This does not include the cost of my board, (commencing today at noon) but I have still 9 of my $10 left. Gill I have induced to agree to start for the Shakers in the morning. Kagi has not arrived. – I learn from Gill that a certain Mr Warner, living at Milan, Erie Co, (whom Gill saw) has been told by a Mr King (I think) who resides somewhere in the vicinity of Lindenville that a quantity of material was located in a certain county, (name correctly given) and that this Warner has mentioned it to another man. All these are (Gill says) true men, but I do not like the idea any more for that. Nor am I better pleased to learn from the same source that a certain Mr Reynolds (colored) who attended our convention, has disclosed its objects to the members of a secret society (colored) called “The American Mysteries” or some confounded humbug. I suppose it is likely that these people are good men enough, but to make a sort of wholesale divulgement of matters at hazard is too steep even for me, who am not by any means over cautious. [John Edwin] Cook, also, I learn, conducted himself here in a manner well calculated to arouse suspicion. According to Parsons, he stated in his boarding house that he was here on a secret expedition, and that the rest of the company were under his orders. He made a most ostentatious display of his equipments – was careful to let it be known that he had been in Kansas – stated among other recitals of impossible achievements, that he had killed 5 men, and in short, drew largely on his imagination in order to render himself conspicuous. – He found out and called on a lady friend whom he knew in Conn. – talked a great deal too much to her, and wound up his performance by proposing to Parsons, Gill, & [Stewart] Taylor, a trip to the same locality on the same errand, HDT WHAT? INDEX

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in the event of postponement. He has taken his tools with him. It pains me to be obliged to say these things of one whom I have known so long, but I should be lacking in common honesty if I withheld them from you, and especially now, when we have to tread with double care. – I am not at all sure but that in the event of deferment our chief danger will accrue from him, and his dreadful affliction of the “caocethes loguendi”, which rendered into English means “rage for talking” or “tongue malady”. – And this brings to a close this report of Very Truly Richard Realf.

May 31. A.M. — To Island. Choke-berry, a day or two. Cornus florida, not yet for two or three days. I saw some in Connecticut with involucres much more rosaceous than ours. A yellowbird’s nest of that grayish milkweed fibre, one egg, in alder by wall west of Indian burying(?)-ground.

P. M. - To Laurel Glen. I see, running along on the flat side of a railroad rail on the causeway, a wild mouse with an exceedingly long tail. Perhaps it would be called the long-tailed meadow mouse. It has no white, only the feet are light flesh-color; but it is uniformly brown as far as I can see, — for it rests a long time on the rail within a rod, — but when I look at it from behind in the sun it is a very tawny almost golden brown, quite handsome. It finally runs, with a slight hop, — the tarsus of the hind legs being very long while the fore legs are short and its head accordingly low, — down the bank to the meadow. I saw on the 29th white Viola pedata, and to-day a white V. cucullata. There were severe frosts on the nights of the 28th and 29th, and now I see the hickories turned quite black, and in low ground the white oak shoots, though they do not show black in drying. Also many ferns are withered and black and some Prinos lævigatus tips, etc. I find a chewink’s nest with four eggs (fresh) on the side-hill at Jarvis’s wood-lot, twenty feet below woodchuck’s hole at canoe birch. The nest is first of withered leaves, then stubble, thickly lined with withered grass and partly sheltered by dead leaves, shoved [?] up a huckleberry bush. There was a slight sea-turn, the wind coming cool and easterly this morning, which at first I mistook for the newly leafing deciduous trees investing the evergreens, which is a kind of sea-turn in harmony with the other. I remember that the stage-drivers riding back and forth daily from Concord to Boston and becoming weather- wise perforce, often meeting the sea-breeze on its way into the country, were wont to show their weather wisdom by telling anxious travellers that it was nothing but a sea-turn. At 5 P.M., go to see a gray squirrel’s nest in the oak at the Island point. It is about fifteen feet from the ground, — the entrance, — where a limb has been broken off, and the tree is hollow above and below. One young one darted past downward under my face, with the speed of a bird. There is much short brown dung about, and a smell of urine, and the twigs around have been gnawed. Does not the voice of the toad along the river sound differently now from what it did a month ago? I think it is much less sonorous and ringing, a more croaking and inquisitive or qui vive sound. Is it not less prolonged also? HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

1859

Abandoning John Brown’s violent agenda and radical abolitionism as a whole on the basis of a reading of President of Brown University Francis Wayland’s THE LIMITATIONS OF HUMAN RESPONSIBILITY (Boston: Gould, Kendall and Lincoln, 1838), Richard Realf determined to become a priest and spent 3 months of this year in the Jesuit college at Spring Hill, Alabama followed by further study in New Orleans (in the following year we will find him joining the celibate Shaker community in Union Village, Ohio).

The Kansas Territory’s 4th constitutional convention convened at Wyandotte, and the Wyandotte Constitution was written. The new town of Hyatt was virtually abandoned at this point, with many of its settlers moving on to Pikes Peak — nothing now remains.

THE 2D GREAT AMERICAN DISUNION The firebrand Reverend Thomas Wentworth Higginson headed west, to aid in the Kansas free-state movement. There he would become involved again with John Brown. In this year the following revealing comment HDT WHAT? INDEX

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appeared in a Kansas newspaper:

We believe it to our interest to discourage the settlement of free negroes in Kansas. The two races never have, and never can associate together on terms of equality. But at the same time, if we have got to have them here, we would have them educated; we are opposed to ignorance in every shape.

— Samuel Newitt Wood, in the Kansas Press, 1859, as quoted on page 418 of William Least Heat-Moon’s PrairyErth (a deep map) [Boston MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1991]. HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

1860

January 21, Saturday: Henry Thoreau made no entry in his journal.

A package arrived at the Paris home of Hector Berlioz with a note. “Dear Berlioz, I am delighted to be able to offer you the first copy of my Tristan. Accept it and keep it out of friendship for me. Richard Wagner.” The score was inscribed “To the dear and great author of Romeo and Juliet, from the grateful author of Tristan und Isolde.” LISTEN TO IT NOW

In Washington DC, Richard Realf testified before the special committee of the federal Senate tasked to investigate the attack on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry: RICHARD REALF sworn and examined. By the CHAIRMAN: Question: Will you state to the committee of what country you are a native, and what your age is? Answer: I am a native of England. I was born in the year 1834. I shall therefore be twenty-six next June. Question: When did you first come to this country? Answer: In 1854. Question: Are your parents living now in England? Answer: They are. Question: Will you state what was the occupation in life of your father? Answer: At the time I left England my father was filling the position which he now fills, namely, an officer of the English rural police. Question: To what occupation had he been bred? Answer: My father was a blacksmith at one time. That trade he learned himself. He was a peasant, which means an agricultural laborer. Question: Will you state what brought you to the United States in 1854? Answer: I had been a protégé of Lady Noell Byron, widow of Lord Byron. I had disagreed with Lady Noell Byron, on account of some private matters, which it is not necessary to explain here, but which rendered me desirous of finding some other place in which to dwell. Moreover, my instincts were democratic and republican, or, at least, anti-monarchical. Therefore I came to America. Question: Had you any acquaintance in this country when you came over? Answer: No, sir; no personal acquaintance. Question: Will you say whether you formed the acquaintance of John Brown, who was recently executed in Virginia for murder and treason? Answer: Yes, sir; I did form his acquaintance. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Question: When? Answer: In the year 1857. I cannot say whether it was the last day of November or the first of December, but within two or three days of that time. Question: Will you state what brought you to his acquaintance, and where it was? Answer: I was residing in the city of Lawrence, Kansas, as a correspondent of the Illinois State Gazette, edited by Messrs. Bailhace & Baker. I had been, and was, a radical abolitionist. In November, 1857, John Edwin Cook, also recently executed in Virginia, came to my boarding-house, in Lawrence, bringing me an invitation from John Brown to visit him at a place called Tabor, in Iowa. There I met John Brown. Question: You went with Cook? Answer: I went with John E. Cook. Question: Did Brown then make known to you the object of the invitation to come and see him? Answer: John Brown made known to a certain, but not to any definite and detailed degree, his intentions. He stated that he purposed to make an incursion into the Southern States, somewhere in the mountainous region of the Blue Ridge and the Alleghenies. Question: What was the plan and purpose of the incursion, or did he develop it? Answer: At Tabor, in Iowa, no place was named. Question: What were the character and object of the incursion? Did he tell that? Answer: To liberate the slaves. Question: Did he disclose how he proposed to effect it? Answer: Not at that time. Question: Did you enter into any arrangements or engagements with him in reference to it? Answer: Yes, sir. Question: State what they were. Answer: I agreed to accompany him. Question: Did you remain under his control or guidance? What subsequent disposition did you make of yourself, or did he make of you, after that interview at Tabor? Answer: I will tell you. From Tabor, where I myself first met John Brown and the majority of the persons forming the white part of his company in Virginia, we passed across the State of Iowa, until we reached Cedar County, in that State. We started in December, 1857. It was about the end of December, 1857, or the beginning of January, 1858, when we reached Cedar County, the journey thus consuming about a month of time. We stopped at a village called Springdale, in that county, where, in a settlement principally composed of Quakers, we remained. Question: Did John Brown accompany you there? Answer: John Brown accompanied us thither, but, whilst we ourselves remained there, John Brown went on East. Question: Now, will you state who composed the company that HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Brown had assembled there, distinguishing between the whites and blacks, if there were any blacks? Answer: Myself, Mr. Kagi, Mr. Cook, Mr. Stevens, Mr. Tidd, Mr. Leeman, Mr. Moffet, and Mr. Parsons, all these being whites, and Mr. Richard Richardson, a colored man, whom I met with Brown, at Tabor. These composed our company. Question: How long did you remain at Springdale? Answer: From the month — whether it be, I cannot now remember, the latter part of December, 1857) or the beginning of January, 1858, but from that time up until about the last week in April) a period of nearly three months. Question: What was your occupation while you were there? Answer: We were being drilled a part of the time, and receiving military lessons under Mr. Stevens. A part of the time I was lecturing. Question: Did Brown provide for the support of the company while you were there? Answer: Brown provided for the support of the company whilst we were there in this way: upon reaching there he, finding himself unable to dispose of the mules and wagons with which he transported us across the State, and unable to get the price he desired for them, left us there to board, the property named to belong to the man who kept us, a price having been agreed upon between himself and Mr. Brown. Question: Whom did you board with? Answer: With a Mr. Maxom. Question: Did he keep a tavern? Answer: No, sir; a private farm-house. Question: You remained there, you say, until the following April? Answer: Yes, sir. Question: Will you inform the committee whether, during your residence there or at any time subsequent to Brown’s inviting you to join that party, you heard of a man or made the acquaintance of a man named Forbes? Answer: I never made the acquaintance of Colonel Forbes. I have heard of such a man. Question: Will you say whether it was expected that he should be your military instructor? I mean anything you learned from Brown on the subject. Answer: Yes, sir. You did not ask me the question, but I may as well state the fact that during our passage across Iowa, Brown’s plan in regard to an incursion into Virginia gradually manifested itself. It was a matter of discussion between us as to the possibility of effecting a successful insurrection in the mountains, some arguing that it was, some that it was not; myself thinking, and still thinking, that a mountainous country is a very fine country for an insurrection, in which I am borne out by historic evidence which it is not necessary to state now. Question: Brown’s plans, then, were to make an incursion somewhere into the mountainous regions of Virginia? HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Answer: Yes, sir. Question: Did he say when he expected to effect it? Answer: In that spring. Question: Will you state whether the military training that he proposed for you and the company, had a reference to that incursion? Answer: It was my belief that it had. Question: Did he give you, in the course of conversation; any outlines or plans as to how he proposed to effect it — the mode of doing it? Answer: Not during our residence in Iowa. Question: You say Brown left you there. When did he return? Answer: Brown returned a day or two before the period at which we left, namely, the last week in April, 1858. Question: Did he inform you or the company, in conversation, how he had been occupied during the period of his absence? Answer: No, sir; and here I ought to say, which you have also omitted to ask in regard to Colonel Forbes, that whereas we expected Colonel Forbes to be our military instructor, yet, in consequence of a disagreement between himself and John Brown, the latter wrote us from the East that Forbes would not become our military instructor, and that we should not expect him. Question: Do you remember the point in the East he wrote from? Answer: I do not. He used to write to his son Owen, one of the deceased persons, and in stating the number of persons comprising our company, I accidentally omitted his son. Owen was with us. Question: Did Brown have much correspondence with his son while he was absent. Answer: No, sir; the correspondence was very rare. Mr. COLLAMER. In stating what was said by Brown, I desire the witness, as much as possib1e, to give exactly what Brown himself said the words used. The CHAIRMAN: Exactly. It is desirable; of course, that you should give, if you can, the exact language; or if you cannot do that, give the substance of any communication from Brown. The WITNESS: I will endeavor to do so. Question: What was the next movement made by the company and Brown after his return in April? Answer: The next movement after his arrival was an immediate departure from Iowa into Canada, via Chicago and Detroit. Question: You remained at Springdale; you say, January, February, and March, something more than three months? Answer: Yes, sir. Question: Were the objects of your assembling there made known to the people around, in any way? Answer: Not by myself; I cannot tell whether by others. Question: Could you not learn something of it from conversations? Answer: I am inclined to think that the people knew nothing at all of our movements for the reason that by some we were HDT WHAT? INDEX

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suspected to be Mormon emissaries. Question: Did you not divest yourselves of that suspicion. Answer: No, sir. Question: Can you inform the committee whether there was any person or persons in that neighborhood who did know of the object of your assembling and your future plans? Answer: I do believe that John Brown had given a man named Townsend; I cannot remember his first name, a member of the Society of Friends, some indirect and indefinite hints of his plan. I do also think that from the nature of a conversation which a Mr. Varny, also residing in the immediate neighborhood, and being also a Quaker, held with myself, that some one must have given him some hints in regard to the same matter; but neither of those people were evidently, from the tone of their conversation, possessed of any definite information in regard to the matter. Question: How were your military trainings conducted? Where were they conducted? Answer: Principally in a field behind the house of Mr. Maxom; it being generally understood in the place where we were boarding, in the vicinity and round about, that we were thus studying military tactics and being thus drilled in order to return to Kansas and prosecute our endeavors to make Kansas a free State. Question: That was the first idea? Answer: That was the general understanding. Question: Had you arms? Answer: Yes, sir. John E. Cook had his own private arms. We had our private arms. I had my pair of Colt’s revolvers. Question: Did Brown furnish you with any arms? Answer: No, sir, not myself, ever. Question: I mean any of his company? Answer: Not to my knowledge, because I suppose you will remember that I met the people comprising this company gathered together at Tabor. All of these people had been engaged in Kansas warfare. Everybody at that period in Kansas went armed, and the inference is that they were well armed before they met John Brown. Indeed, I am certain of that matter, because, in a greater or less degree, all of them had been engaged in the Kansas troubles. Question: I only wanted to know whether Brown had furnished you any arms for the purpose of training. Answer: No, sir. Question: What part of Canada did you stop at? Answer: We stopped at a town called Chatham, in Canada West. By Mr. OOLLAMER: Question: What time did you get there? Answer: It must have been about April 28 or 29, 1858, I think; or perhaps the 1st or 2d of May. I cannot remember within two or three days. I recollect it was at that time, because the convention, to which we shall come presently, was held on the 10th of May; and we were there a sufficient time to allow John HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Brown to write letters, about which I shall, doubtless, be asked. By the CHAIRMAN: Question: Will you state who of the company that you had at Springdale, accompanied John Brown to Chatham? Answer: All of the company whom I named as having gone to Springdale and two others: a young man named George B. Gill, who resided at Springdale, who had learned of our plans, from whom I do not know, but I suppose from John Brown, inasmuch as he never manifested any desire to accompany us anywhere until the return of John Brown; and another young man, named Stewart Taylor, the latter of whom was killed at Harper’s Ferry, and the former of whom, so far as I have been able to learn, was not present at the incursion. Question: Where did Stewart Taylor come from? Answer: I do not know. Question: Did this man Richardson, the Negro, go with you to Chatham? Answer: Yes, sir. Question: Was Brown’s intercourse with the Negro of a character to show that he treated him as an equal and an associate? Answer: It certainly was. To prove it, I will simply state that, having to wait twelve hours at Chicago, in order to make railroad connection from Chicago to Detroit, and to Canada, we necessarily had to breakfast and dine. We went into one of the hotels in order to breakfast. We took this colored man, Richardson, to table with us. The keeper of the hotel explained to us that it could not be allowed. We did not eat our breakfast. We went to another hotel, where we could take a colored man with us and sit down to breakfast. Question: Where you could enjoy your rights, I suppose? Answer: Yes, sir. Question: Will you state in what way the expenses of your transportation were defrayed? Answer: They were defrayed by John Brown. Question: What was done on your arrival at Chatham? Answer: Upon our arrival in Chatham, Canada West, we boarded at a hotel kept by a colored man, (I do not remember his name,) whence written (not printed) circulars were sent to certain persons east and west, for Chicago is west of Canada, inviting their attendance at a quiet convention of the friends of freedom, to be held on the day named, namely, May 10, 1858. Question: Did you remain there during the intermediate time between the last of April and the 10th of May; or was the convention held earlier? Answer: There were two conventions. The constitutional convention was held two days previous to the election of the officers. The constitution had been adopted, and then the election of the officers was held. I had forgotten that before. The constitutional convention was on the 8th of May, 1858. The CHAIRMAN here submits to the witness the papers heretofore HDT WHAT? INDEX

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produced by Andrew Hunter, and purporting to be the minutes or “Journal of the Provisional Constitutional Convention,” and of the convention to elect officers, signed respectively by “J.H. Kagi,” as “secretary of the convention,” and asks the following Question: Do you know the handwriting of these papers? Answer: I do; it is the handwriting of John Henry Kagi. [The papers are identified by the chairman placing his initials thereon.] Question: It is stated in these minutes that “on motion of Mr. Delany, Mr. Brown then proceeded to state the object of the convention at length.” Did you know this “Mr. Delany?” Answer. Yes, sir; he was a colored doctor, residing in Chatham, Canada West. Question: Do you mean a Negro when you say “colored?” Answer: Yes, sir. Question: Who was the presiding officer of this convention? Answer: A man named Munroe — a preacher. Question: Where did he come from? Answer: I believe the city of Detroit? By Mr. COLLAMER: Question: Was he a colored man? Answer: Yes, sir; a mulatto. By the CHAIRMAN: Question: Do you recollect Brown’s speech, which, it is said in these minutes “developed the plan?” Answer: I cannot remember his speech. I can remember certain salient points and leading ideas in his speech. Question: He did make a speech? Answer: Yes, sir. Question: Of course you cannot remember the speech; but will you state as briefly but as exactly as you can, what he did state to be the object in view of this constitution and all that? Answer: John Brown, on rising, stated that for twenty or thirty years the idea had possessed him like a passion of giving liberty to the slaves. He stated immediately thereafter, that he made a journey to England in 1851, in which year he took to the international exhibition at London, samples of wool from Ohio, during which period he made a tour upon the European continent, inspecting all fortifications, and especially all earth-work forts which he could find, with a view, as he stated, of applying the knowledge thus gained, with modifications and inventions of his own, to such a mountain warfare as he thereafter spoke upon in the United States. John Brown stated, moreover, that he had not been indebted to anybody for the suggestion of this plan; that it arose spontaneously in his own mind; that through a series of from twenty to thirty years it had gradually formed and developed itself into shape and plan. He stated that he had read all the books upon insurrectionary warfare which he could lay his hands upon — the Roman warfare; the successful opposition of the Spanish chieftains during the period when Spain was a Roman province; how with ten thousand men divided HDT WHAT? INDEX

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and subdivided into small companies, acting simultaneously, yet separately, they withstood the whole consolidated power of the Roman empire through a number of years. In addition to this, he said he had become very familiar with the successful warfare waged by Schamyl, the Circassian chief, against the Russians; he had posted himself in relation to the wars of Toussaint L’Ouverture; he had become thoroughly acquainted with the wars in Hayti and the islands round about; and from all these things he had drawn the conclusion, believing, as he stated there he did believe, and as we all (if I may judge from myself) believed, that upon the first intimation of a plan formed for the liberation of the slaves, they would immediately rise all over the Southern States. He supposed that they would come into the mountains to join him, where he purposed to work, and that by flocking to his standard they would enable him (by making the line of mountains which cuts diagonally through Maryland and Virginia down through the Southern States into Tennessee and Alabama, the base of his operations) to act upon the plantations on the plains lying on each side of that range of mountains) and that we should be able to establish ourselves in the fastnesses, and if any hostile action (as would be) were taken against us, either by the militia of the separate States, or by the armies of the United States, we purposed to defeat first the militia, and next, if it were possible, the troops of the United States, and then organize the freed blacks under this provisional constitution, which would carve out for the locality of its jurisdiction all that mountainous region in which the blacks were to be established, and in which they were to be taught the useful and mechanical arts, and to be instructed in all the business of life. Schools were also to be established, and so on. That was it. Question: Did he develop in that plan where he expected to get aid or assistance; who were to be his soldiers? Answer: The Negroes were to constitute the soldiers. John Brown expected that all the free Negroes in the Northern States would immediately flock to his standard. He expected that all the slaves in the Southern States would do the same. He believed, too, that as many of the free Negroes in Canada as could accompany him, would do so. Question: Was anything said in his developments of his expectations and resources after he got into the slave States of any division of sentiment between the slaveholders and non- slaveholders? Answer: The slaveholders were to be taken as hostages if they refused to let their slaves go. It is a mistake to suppose that they were to be killed; they were not to be. They were to be held as hostages for the safe treatment of any prisoners of John Brown’s who might fall into the hands of hostile parties. Question: As to the non-slaveholders; was there anything said about them? Answer: All the non-slaveholders were to be protected. Those who HDT WHAT? INDEX

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would not join the organization of John Brown, but who would not oppose it, were to be protected; but those who did oppose it, were to be treated as the slaveholders themselves. By Mr. DAVIS: Question: Where did he expect in the first instance to get his resources of money and arms? Answer: John Brown expected that— Mr. COLLAMER. Did he say that? We are talking now of what he said in his speech. Mr. DAVIS. What he stated. Answer: John Brown did not make any explicit or definite statement in his speech at all as regarded where the money was to come from. Mr. FITCH. I do not understand that the witness is limited to that speech. The CHAIRMAN: No, sir. Mr. FITCH. The understanding was that he was to state to the committee any information derived from Brown himself at any time. The CHAIRMAN: It was to prevent confusion of what he did derive from Brown and from other sources, that I put the questions as I did. Mr. COLLAMER. But I suppose what he is telling us now is what Brown stated in that speech on that occasion. The WITNESS: I have been stating what Brown said in that speech, all this being a part thereof. Mr. DAVIS. So I understood, and that is the reason I asked the question I did. The WITNESS: It is not yet quite all of that speech. Mr. DAVIS. I did not wish to break the chain. The CHAIRMAN: Go on and give us all you can recollect of Brown’s exposition on that occasion. Answer: Thus, John Brown said that he believed, a successful incursion could be made; that it could be successfully maintained; that the several slave States could be forced (from the position in which they found themselves) to recognize the freedom of those who had been slaves within the respective limits of those States; that immediately such recognitions were made, then the places of all the officers elected under this provisional constitution became vacant, and new elections were to be made. Moreover, no salaries were to be paid to the officeholders under this constitution. It was purely out of that which we supposed to be philanthropy — love for the slave. Moreover, it is a mistake to suppose, as Cook in his confession has stated — and I now get away from John Brown’s speech — that at the period of that convention the people present took an oath to support that constitution. They did no such thing. This Dr. Delany of whom I have spoken, proposed, immediately the convention was organized, that an oath should be taken by all who were present, not to divulge any of the proceedings that might transpire; whereupon John Brown rose and stated his HDT WHAT? INDEX

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objections to such an oath. He had himself conscientious scruples against taking an oath, and all he requested was a promise that any person who should thereafter divulge any of the proceedings that might transpire, agreed to forfeit the protection which that organization could extend over him. Mr. DAVIS. If the witness has concluded his recollection in relation to what Brown stated — The WITNESS: No, sir; I have not. John Brown stated in that convention, in the speech he made, that there were a great number of rich people all over the free States who, he doubted not, would assist him. He stated that he had some rich friends in the free States who had assisted him, and who had promised further to assist him, but John Brown did not disclose their names, being too profound and sagacious a man to do so. Question: Did he say, do you recol1ect, that the friends to whom he referred had promised aid, or that he expected it only? Answer: That they had assisted him in some degree; that they had promised to assist him further. By Mr. COLLAMER: Question: Did he state that those people understood this — his plan? Answer: No, sir; he did not state so explicitly, but that was the idea which he conveyed to us. In order to render that answer intelligible, I should say that John Brown had, from the time he went to Kansas, devoted his whole being, mental, moral, and physical, all that he had and was, to the extinction of slavery. He stated that he only went to Kansas in order to gain a footing for the furtherance of this matter. He stated that explicitly and emphatically. Question: That that was his private purpose? Answer: Yes, sir; that that was his private purpose; and he stated that, having left his wife and children and home, these friends had assisted him to prosecute his designs against slavery in Kansas first, and next generally in his enterprises in the cause of freedom. By the CHAIRMAN: Question: Have you gone through with your recollections of Brown’s exposition to the convention? Answer: I have, except that if any questions should be asked me in regard thereto, they might suggest certain things to me which I cannot now remember without those questions. I have stated as much as I can, of my own recollection, remember. Question: Will you tell us this: was there any person belonging to Canada in that convention who took any part in the discussion of John Brown’s plan, after his exposition? Answer: Yes, sir; Dr. Delany was one of the prominent disputants, or debaters. Question: Will you state, as far as you can recollect, anything that fell from Delany showing a coincidence of purpose with John Brown? Answer: The whole tenor of Dr. Delany’s speeches was to convey HDT WHAT? INDEX

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the idea to John Brown that he might rely upon all the colored people in Canada to assist him. By Mr. DAVIS: Question: Were there any Canadians other than Negroes? Answer: No, sir; not one. By the CHAIRMAN: Question: Have you any reason to know whether the purposes of the convention, or the purposes ultimately disclosed in the convention, were known to the white people around you there in Chatham? Answer: I am confident that they were not. Question: Was the convention held in the presence of an audience or in secret? Answer: The convention was held with closed doors, all other persons present excepting Brown’s original party being colored men. Question: And Canadian Negroes? Answer: Yes, sir, Canadian Negroes. Question: You have stated that in traveling from Tabor across Iowa to Springdale, you were about a month engaged in it, and that John Brown conducted the expedition and defrayed the expenses, and that he left you then, and left his mules, &c., in pledge for the expenses of the party. Did he tell you or the company of the object of his going eastward? Answer: Yes, sir. He had two purposes in going to the East; one to secure the services of Colonel Forbes, and bring him on, in order to instruct us. Another purpose was to secure funds. Question: How do you mean “to secure funds?” Answer: To secure funds to enable him to prosecute his business. Question: How was he to get them? Answer: I do not know; he did not state. It was to collect funds. Here I ought to state, inasmuch as it may be of use during this examination that John Brown was a man who would never state more than it was absolutely necessary for him to do. None of his most intimate associates, and I was one of the most intimate, was possessed of more than barely sufficient information to enable Brown to attach such companion to him; and none of us were cognizant of more than the general plan of his design until the time we reached Chatham, Canada West. By Mr. DAVIS: Question: Have you, from Brown or other sources, any means of informing us where the money and arms were expected to be obtained? Answer: No, sir; I have not, except to say this — and I am glad that the question is put — that a certain number of arms had been placed in the hands of John Brown by Dr. Howe, or which it was supposed had thus been placed, by Dr. Howe, of Boston. Dr. Howe was the Massachusetts representative of the national Kansas committee, a committee which received contributions and made collections to be applied to the assistance of the free State settlers in Kansas during the troubles in that Territory. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Afterwards, on account of disagreement, the Massachusetts committee withdrew from the national committee, and had received back a certain quantity of arms which it, Massachusetts, had purchased and thrown into the general granary, so to speak. Mr. COLLAMER. Where were those arms, do you know? The WITNESS: They had been at Tabor, in Iowa. Mr. DAVIS: (to the witness.) You were going on to say something. What was it? The WITNESS: Dr. Howe, as the representative of Massachusetts, immediately following the disagreement, withdrew the control of those arms from the national committee, and had therefore himself control over them. The CHAIRMAN: But the arms, I understand, still remained at Tabor. The WITNESS: I do not know whether they did or not. I cannot tell, inasmuch as when I reached Tabor John Brown had made all his arrangements for immediate passage across Iowa. Mr. DAVIS. The witness was interrupted in what he was going on to state. I desire him to continue it. The WITNESS: I do not know that Dr. Howe placed those arms in John Brown’s possession, but I supposed so, for a reason which I will explain immediately. Within a day or two following the convention at Chatham, John Brown said to me that he had received a copy of a letter written by Senator Henry Wilson of Massachusetts, from Washington city, to Dr. Howe, of Boston. Brown then stated to me that Colonel Forbes, maddened by the failure to receive money from John Brown, as had been agreed on according to Forbes’s statement, and exasperated by the dreadful condition in which his family were, or in which he claimed that they were, in Paris, had threatened to make disclosures of Brown’s plan, unless Brown forwarded money to him. Forbes was cognizant of Brown’s plan, for the reason that at one period he had agreed, as I learned, to head the expedition; but a rupture occurring between him and Brown, he, being possessed of Brown’s plans, threatened to divulge them, and did divulge them, or so much of them as was necessary to put people on the alert. He divulged them, as I say, to Senator Wilson, in this city. Mr. COLLAMER. That is what Brown told you. The WITNESS: Yes, sir; that is what Brown told me. To explain it a little more, I should perhaps say that Brown had written to us whilst we were at Springdale, that Forbes and himself had disagreed. On the occasion of which I have just spoken, at Chatham, Brown said to me that Colonel Forbes, maddened by the non-receipt of moneys which he had expected to receive, had threatened to divulge Brown’s plans, and had done so by coming to Washington, and stating to Senator Henry Wilson, of Massachusetts, that Brown had a purpose in view of effecting an insurrection in the Southern States. Senator Wilson, immediately upon receipt of the news, said that he did not think any man, or any company of men, could be wild enough and mad enough to do such a thing; but knowing the character of John Brown, and HDT WHAT? INDEX

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supposing — The CHAIRMAN: Are you giving this as what Brown told you? The WITNESS: I have given that which Brown said to me, and now I am making a statement in regard to what Henry Wilson said. Mr. COLLAMER. What Brown told you Mr. Wilson said? The WITNESS: What Brown told me he said. Thus, then: Forbes has made this revelation to Wilson, whether definite and in detail I do not know, but he had made a revelation of that kind. Immediately upon receipt thereof, Senator Wilson sat down and wrote to Dr. Howe that, understanding or supposing that arms belonging to the Massachusetts committee, which Howe had withdrawn from the national committee, had been placed by his, Howe’s, hands in care of John Brown, he, Wilson, requested him, Howe, to withdraw from John Brown’s hands all command over those arms, lest in a moment of madness, he might possibly put into operation such a scheme. This letter was written by Senator Wilson to Dr. Howe, of Massachusetts. All along, I say Dr. Howe, but I cannot swear that it was Dr. Howe; but if it was not he, it was Sanborn. Whilst I have one thought out of ten that it might be Sanborn, I have nine out of ten that it was Howe. It was one of those two men, and Howe I believe. Mr. DOOLITTLE. I think there was one sentence you did not finish when you were interrupted by another question. You began a sentence stating that Mr. Wilson said that he did not think any man or any company of men could be found to go into such a scheme. Please finish it. The WITNESS: But lest they should be mad enough to do it, he Wilson, requested him, Howe, to withdraw from Brown’s hands those arms, so as to place it out of his power to do the thing. A copy of this letter, thus written by Wilson to Howe, was forwarded by Howe to Brown, at Chatham, and in compliance with the request made to Howe by Wilson, he did withdraw those arms from Brown; that is, he made a requisition on Brown to deliver them up, stating that he withdrew from him the carte blanche, or power of attorney, or whatever it was he had over them. Whether or not he afterwards reinstated Brown in the possession of those arms, I cannot say. That is so much as relates to that matter. By the CHAIRMAN: Question: You have spoken of the contents of the copy of a letter from Wilson to Howe; will you state how you derived knowledge of those contents? Answer: John Brown read those letters to me. Question: Howe’s letter to him, and Wilson’s letter to Howe? Answer: Yes, sir. Mr. DAVIS. Did the letter of Senator Wilson disclose the fact that Forbes was enraged? Answer: Only that Forbes had made such a statement to Wilson. The CHAIRMAN; You have stated to us, as I understand, that Brown read to you the copy of Wilson’s letter to Howe, which he alleged Howe had sent to him. Now, will you give to the committee, as HDT WHAT? INDEX

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nearly as your memory will allow the contents of Wilson’s letter to Howe? The WITNESS: I can but remember the things of which I have spoken in regard to it, the contents of his letter being that Forbes had made such a revelation to him, Wilson. The CHAIRMAN: What revelation? The WITNESS: A revelation that John Brown proposed to commit an incursion on the Southern States. I stated before that I did not know whether Forbes gave any definite or detailed information in regard to the plan or not; because, if he did so, Wilson did not state it. The CHAIRMAN: We do not want your inferences, but we desire you to state, as nearly as you can, the contents of the letter from Wilson to Howe, and the request which you say was contained in it. The WITNESS: The request was based upon the statement made by Forbes to Wilson, and Wilson either knowing or supposing, I cannot tell which— The CHAIRMAN: We do not want anything about that. Did the letter itself say what statement Forbes had made? The WITNESS: I cannot tell whether it ran in so many words or not, but it said that John Brown had designs against the Southern States, calculated to effect a rupture between the free and the slave States, and in order to stop it he wrote. By Mr. DAVIS: Question: Did Brown’s knowledge of Forbes’s intention to divulge his secret come from the copy of the letter received by him from Dr. Howe, as having been sent to Dr. Howe by Senator Wilson, or did he know it anterior to that? Answer: He knew previously to that, that Forbes had threatened to do these things, in several letters. Question: And now he was made aware that he had done it? Answer: Yes, sir. Now, he was made aware that Forbes had done so. By the CHAIRMAN: Question: Do you know whether Brown remained in possession of the arms spoken of by Senator Wilson and Dr. Howe, or whether he afterwards got them into his possession? Answer: I do not know; for the reason that a very short time following the receipt of that letter by John Brown, I left the party, and have since had no connection with them. Mr. COLLAMER. What was the occasion of your leaving the party? For what ostensible purpose did you leave? The WITNESS: I will tell you. The CHAIRMAN: Before that, I want to ask what became of the members of the convention when they adjourned. The WITNESS: The answer to that will include the answer to the other question. The CHAIRMAN: After the convention adjourned, what became of those members of the convention that had been with you under military drill at Springdale, including yourself? Answer: Immediately following the adjournment of the convention, HDT WHAT? INDEX

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a portion of the original company went from Chatham, in Canada, to Cleveland, in Ohio, in the United States. Question: Who went there? Answer: I cannot now remember all the party who went there; but I know that Cook was one who went; I know that Stevens was one who went; that Tidd was another; that G.B. Gill was another; that Stewart Taylor was another; that Owen Brown was another; and I think they were all. Question: Were you with them? Answer: No, sir; but very shortly afterwards, myself, the colored man Richard Richardson, and another colored man, whose name I cannot recollect, residing in Canada, and who had agreed to accompany us, went from Chatham to Cleveland. In addition to these persons, I now remember that Mr. Leeman, one of the persons killed at Harper’s Ferry, went with me, too. Our departure, by which I mean the departure of those who were with me, as contradistinguished from those that went before, was about two weeks later than the departure of the first company. Question: Then you remained at Chatham for two weeks after the adjournment? Answer: About that time. Question: Then you went to Cleveland? Answer: We went to Cleveland. Now, I ought to say here that those persons comprising the first party who went from Chatham to Cleveland did not remain in the city. They went out into the surrounding country and procured work, John Brown’s means being so limited that he could not pay their board. I have not stated what John Brown did yet. He went east, leaving me to go on to Cleveland, and there await the receipt of letters from him from the East, and his own return from that quarter. John Brown went east. He went to North Elba, where his family resided. He wrote to me from North Elba that he would shortly return. Afterwards he went to Boston. He again wrote me from Boston that he had been delayed, but would shortly return. None of John Brown’s letters to me, of which I think I received during my stay in Cleveland three, contained over four lines; there from you may judge how much John Brown allowed his people to be cognizant of his plans. Question: Have you preserved those letters? Answer: No, sir; I destroyed them a long time ago. Well, John Brown returned to Cleveland from the East in the beginning of June, 1858, having, perhaps, been absent East a month from his departure from Chatham, Canada West. On his returning to Cleveland, those of our company who had been out in the country procuring work returned to Cleveland to the hotel where John Brown came, and where I was boarding. I ought, however, now that I remember it, to state that John H. Kagi did not go there to Cleveland with the first party or with myself; but he went to a town called Hamilton, in Canada West, and there, being (among his other accomplishments, for he was a very accomplished man) a practical printer, he privately superintended the printing of HDT WHAT? INDEX

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the constitution adopted at the convention. Kagi reached Cleveland a few days previous to the arrival of Brown from the East. We were all united there, consequently, once again. John Brown arrived from the East. John Brown had not procured money. He had probably about $300 altogether. He had not enough to pay the necessary expenses for the printing of the copies of the constitution in Canada. He had barely enough to give those who accompanied him a sufficient amount of money to enable them to return back to their different places of abode. Mr. Kagi, John Brown, and Mr. Tidd went back to Kansas. John E. Cook received his quantum of the money. I do not know whither he went. Stewart Taylor received his, and went to Ann Arbor, Michigan. G.B. Gill and Mr. Stevens returned to Springdale, Iowa, the brother of Mr. Gill residing there, and Mr. Stevens having formed some connections which induced him to return. I was to go on to New York City. Question: Did you go by direction of anybody? Answer: I went— Question: What sent you there, or who sent you there? Answer: John Brown sent me to New York city for this purpose: Knowing that Forbes had made these revelations about which I have spoken, and knowing, too, that it incapacitated him for the time being from prosecuting this plan, he desired me to go on to New York, somehow or other procure an introduction to Forbes; and he being an Englishman and I being an Englishman, he thought we might presently establish mutual good relations; that by ingratiating myself into his esteem, I might ultimately be able to possess myself, acting for Brown, of that obnoxious correspondence held by Forbes, written by Brown to him, in which Brown had developed his plans. For that purpose, I went on to New York, and I ought, in justice to myself to say, that I went with the intention of securing that correspondence; for at that period, though I had not been at all satisfied with the condition of the negroes in Canada, I was still an abolitionist, and I went to New York city purposing to possess myself of this correspondence. I arrived in New York city— The CHAIRMAN: Stop a moment. What were you to go with the correspondence, if you got it? Answer: Return it to John Brown, so that when Forbes was called upon, (as Brown supposed would be the case,) to substantiate his statements, he should not have the means of doing so. I went to New York. In New York City, I met, for the first time, with a book called “Limitations of Human Responsibility,” written by Dr. Wayland, a philosophic author. I had thought a great deal about human responsibility and my own responsibility, perhaps, indeed, a little too much; but I had never thought anything in regard to the limits of it, and that book taught me that there were certain things which I might thoroughly believe myself, but which I had no right to enforce nolens volens on my neighbor, and it set me pondering on a new train of ideas. I did not see Colonel Forbes in New York City. I cannot recollect whether I HDT WHAT? INDEX

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made any attempt to see him or not. What I know is that I did not see him. I met in New York City with Judge Arny, examined before your committee the other day, with Thaddeus Hyatt, a mutual friend of ours. To Judge Arny I made a statement of Brown’s purpose; not, however, in detailed terms, but I said to him that Brown had in view a project of liberating the slaves in the South. I stated the same to Thaddeus Hyatt. Because the lapse of time is so great, and because I have had so many things passing through my brains since, I have forgotten whether I held any conversation with those men beyond making that simple revelation. I know that I went to England; I know that Judge Arny strongly advised me, instead of connecting myself with any such wild movement, to get married, which he thought would most effectually quiet me. I went to England. Cook, in his confession, states that I went to England for the purpose of procuring assistance for John Brown. I did not. I went to England; I wanted to see my father and my mother. I was home- sick. I did very probably say, indeed I know I have often said to Cook, during my acquaintance with him, that England would be the proper place in which to raise money for abolition purposes. I do not know how Brown became cognizant of my departure for England, or Cook either, except in this wise: Arny, knowing I was going to England, I having consulted him in regard to it, and he having advised me, and assisted me to do so, I suppose that on his return to Kansas, he must have told Brown and Kagi, and the rest of them who were there. I saw a statement in a paper, I do not remember what paper, but sometime ago, I saw a statement that the internal evidence of the letters of Brown and his friends plainly revealed the fact that, though they could trace my departure for England, they could not learn anything of me or my movements since. That, therefore, is evidence that I was not collecting money for them in England, or that if I did, they did not get it; which, so far as implicating me is concerned, amounts to about the same thing. Well, I went to England— Mr. COLLAMER. Now, stop. There is no use of pursuing this any further, unless the witness had further connection with Brown. Had you any further connection with Brown? Answer: No, sir; I knew nothing at all about him. Mr. DAVIS. Let the witness proceed, because it has been alleged that he went to England to lecture for the purpose of raising money. The best way in which he can satisfy not only the committee, but others, in relation to what he went there for, is to tell his story. Mr. COLLAMER. It has nothing to do with this inquiry before the committee, but I shall not interpose. The CHAIRMAN: Let us have the whole ground. Mr. COLLA MER. Very well, if you desire it. The WITNESS: I went to England. I lectured in England. I lectured, among other things, on temperance — principally on that subject. Among other things, too, I lectured on the HDT WHAT? INDEX

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literature, liberty, &c., of the United States. I was an abolitionist at the time, too. I never, during the period of my sojourn in England, collected, or endeavored to collect, a single cent of money for any purpose whatever. I was paid for lecturing; and “the laborer is worthy of his hire,” and I put that money in my pocket. Then I went to France. As I stated just now, I had witnessed a great discrepancy between the actual condition of the Negroes in Canada and the statements which I had read in regard to their condition in Canada— Mr. DOOLITTLE. One word in relation to that I have no objection to its going down as far as he wants to exculpate himself from any allegation that he has collected money and misapplied it. Any personal explanation I have no objection to; but then, to lumber up the record with giving his peculiar views about one thing or another which does appear on our investigation, seems to me to be improper. The WITNESS: No, sir; but I will not be one minute longer, if you will permit me. Mr. COLLAMER. That might lead to considerable inquiry and perhaps cross-examination on that point, if you desire to go into it. The CHAIRMAN: I agree we have nothing to do with his mission to England. Mr. COLLAMER. Or his return to America, and going to New Orleans, and from thence to Texas, &c. Mr. DAVIS. I have no desire to go beyond the subject before us. Mr. COLLAMER. The subject is John Brown and his foray. The WITNESS: I have finished in regard to my connection with John Brown. I never wrote him a single letter; never received a single letter from him; never had, directly or indirectly, any acquaintance or connection, in the most remote degree, with the party after my departure from Cleveland. The CHAIRMAN: You have said that in New York you revealed to Arny and to Thaddeus Hyatt what you learned from Brown were his plans as to incursions into the Southern States. The WITNESS: Not as a detailed plan; but a broad statement, that he did purpose to put into operation a movement having for its object the liberation of the slaves. Question: Did you tell, either to Arny or Hyatt, your mission to New York — what brought you there? Answer: I cannot remember whether I did or not, it being such a period of time removed. I will not say I did not I will say it is possible, nay, probable, that I did tell them what my mission there was. Question: But you never did see Colonel Forbes? Answer: I never saw Colonel Forbes, to my knowledge, in my life. Question: Or had any communication with him? Answer: No, sir. Question: Now, I will put this general question: Did you go to England with any view to collect funds for the purpose of carrying on any abolition schemes in the United States? HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Answer: No, sir. Question: You did collect no funds for that purpose? Answer: I collected none. Question: Will you tell us when you returned to the United States? Answer: I returned to the United States, leaving Havre on the 2d of March, 1859, and arriving in New Orleans the 17th of April, the same year. Question: What brought you back to the United States? Answer: My desire to return. Question: And since your arrival, tell us where you have spent the intermediate time? Answer: I spent part of my time in New Orleans. Now I ought to say, in justice to myself, that part of my mission in England was in order to procure the consent of my father and mother to join the Catholic Church. They would not give it to me. Coming back, I immediately joined the Catholic Church without their consent. I purposed to become a Jesuit priest— The CHAIRMAN: I do not want to know anything about that. The WITNESS: But you asked me— The CHAIRMAN: I asked you for your reason for coming back to the United States. The WITNESS: And where I had been, and what I had been doing since I came back. The CHAIRMAN: But it does not follow that you should tell us what your plans and pursuits in private life were. I only want to know what points you have been at in the United States since your return. The WITNESS: Well, sir, New Orleans for one. In New Orleans it was proposed to establish a new Democratic paper, the “Delta” having, as they thought, written itself out. Mr. Semmes, now attorney general of the State, had spoken to some friends of mine— The CHAIRMAN: We do not want that. My question simply was, at what parts of the United States you had been since your return to this country? Answer: New Orleans, Mobile, and Austin, in Texas. Question: Had you any purposes in view, at either of those places, connected with your former views in reference to the abolition of slavery? Answer: No, sir; but I had in view the purpose of investigating the condition of slavery for myself. By Mr. DAVIS: Question: Were you secretary of state of the proposed government to be established by John Brown? Answer: I was. Question: Did you receive and preserve, or was he the depositary of the correspondence which was held with the friends of such a movement on the part of John Brown? Answer: I was not. John Brown was. Question: Were you the organ of any correspondence as secretary HDT WHAT? INDEX

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of state? Answer: No, sir. Question: Were the letters written and the answers received in relation to funds, exhibited to you? Answer: No, sir; for this reason: that but a period of a week or two elapsed between my nomination and election as secretary of state and the disbanding of the whole party, John Brown being in the mean while absent. Question: Did you, from your relation to John Brown and to this organization, know the names of persons who were relied upon to furnish money, or who did furnish money? Answer: Not any other names save those of Dr. Howe, whom Brown mentioned, F.B. Sanborn, whom Brown mentioned, and Gerritt Smith, whom Brown also named. Question: How did he mention them? As having given or being expected to give money? Answer: That Gerritt Smith had given Brown money; that he had assisted Brown from the time when he first went to Kansas, and had promised to assist him further in his enterprises against slavery; whether or not in this particular movement against the South I cannot say, but I suppose that was the understanding. Mr. DOOLITTLE. The supposition ought not to go down. Mr. DAVIS. I think the impression made upon his mind, considering the position he occupied, is legitimate. The answer was allowed to remain as given by the witness. The WITNESS: Here I may as well state, once for all, that I do not believe John Brown would intrust to any man, no matter how intimate his friendship might be, more than barely sufficient of his schemes to secure his cooperation and support. Mr. OOLLAMER. You spoke of Brown having received aid from wealthy people at the North. Did that relate to Kansas? Answer: He said he had received aid from those wealthy people from the time he went to Kansas, and that they had promised to assist him in any enterprises which he might undertake against slavery and in behalf of freedom. That was it; a general promise of assistance — he having left his farm, wife, home, friends, everything. Mr. OOLLAMER. I wish to know whether your position as secretary of state, as it is said, furnished you with any information on which you could found a supposition, more than you had when you were not secretary of state. Answer: No, sir. I should like to say this: Gerritt Smith having been, as I learned from John Brown, one of the persons who had principally supplied him with means, and John Brown having stated that Gerritt Smith had promised to assist him in any enterprises he might undertake for the furtherance of freedom, that he would enable him to prosecute all such movements — on that statement of Brown I based my supposition. Mr. OOLLAMER. And on that only? Answer: On that only. Mr. DAVIS. The question, however, was, whether your position HDT WHAT? INDEX

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enabled you to form a supposition? Answer: My position did not; because, before I became secretary of state I possessed that information; and after I was secretary of state I possessed no more. That information, therefore, was the cause of my supposition, which I not only had after I was secretary of state, but before it. Mr. DAVIS. I ask whether, as secretary of state, the witness was not put in more confidential relations with John Brown than he was before. Answer: No, sir; for the simple reason that, before there was any opportunity of establishing any confidential relations, the whole affair was broken up. By Mr. COLLAMER: Question: Did Brown at any time suggest to you that he had disclosed to Gerritt Smith the purpose which you know he entertained? Answer: Never, sir. By the CHAIRMAN: Question: Did you learn from Brown, at any period of your intercourse with him, and up to the latest period, when he proposed to carry his plans into execution in the Southern States? Answer: John Brown had purposed, immediately upon his return from the East, in June, 1858, to endeavor to put them into operation then. On account of the failure to receive money, as also on account of the revelations Forbes had made, the matter could not proceed. Nothing was to be done, or could be done, Brown said, until I had secured the correspondence to which I have alluded. I did not secure that correspondence, and therefore I supposed the matter could not go on. The CHAIRMAN submitted to the witness a paper marked with the chairman’s initials and indorsed “members of the convention)” (produced by Andrew Hunter,) asking the following: Question: Will you be good enough to state what knowledge you have of this paper on which your name appears? Answer: That is my name, in my own writing. This paper is the one appended to the constitution. All of the persons signing this paper agreed to accept the constitution, and to devote themselves to the furtherance of the purposes for which the constitution was established. The name occurring first is the name of the president of the convention, William Charles Munroe. He was a mulatto. The next is G.I. Reynolds. I cannot remember him; he was not a white man, however. Then there is a name I cannot read; it looks like J.O. Grant; I do not remember him. There were a good many Negroes there; and in a convention of two days it would be difficult to remember all their names. The next is A.J. Smith; I remember him as a Canadian Negro. The next is James M. Jones; I do not know him; he was not a white man, however. Then comes the name of G.B. Gill, a white man, of whom I have already spoken. The next is M.F. Bailey, a Negro. W. Lambert was a Negro. S. Hinton was a Negro. O.W. Moffett was one HDT WHAT? INDEX

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of our original party. J.J. Jackson I do not know; he must have been a Negro. Then comes —— Anderson, the Christian name I cannot make out; he was the colored man of whom I spoke as having come with us from Canada. The next name is Alfred Whipper; I do not remember him. James M. Bell was a mulatto residing in Chatham. William H. Leeman was one of our original party. Alfred M. Ellsworth was a colored man living in Windsor, a village in Canada, opposite Detroit. John E. Cook and Stewart Taylor I have already spoken of as belonging to our company. Charles W. Purnell must have been a colored man. Then comes George Akins, his x mark; Akins was a Negro. Robison Alexander was a Negro. Then comes my own name, Richard Realf. Thomas F. Cary was a Negro. Richard Richardson was the Negro who accompanied us to Iowa. I taught him to write. L.F. Parsons was one of our company. Thomas M. Kinnard was a Negro. M.H. Delany was the colored doctor of whom I spoke. Robert Van Vraiken must have been a Negro. Thomas W. Stringer was a Negro. Charles P. Tidd was a white man, one of our original party. John A. Thomas was a Negro. C. Whipple is the next; that was the name by which Stevens was called. J. D. Shadd was editor of a paper in Canada — a mulatto. Robert Newman was a Negro. Owen Brown was the son of John Brown. Then comes old John Brown’s signature. J.H. Harris was a colored man. Charles Smith was a colored man. Simon Fisher was a colored man. Stephen Dutton was a colored man. Isaac Holden was a colored man. Giles Chitman was a Negro. Thomas Hickerson was a colored man. John Launcel was a colored man, and so was James Smith. John H. Kagi, secretary of the convention, was one of the original party. Mr. DAVIS. Do you know whether these Negroes, or any part of them, were runaway Negroes? Answer: I have no knowledge as to that. The CHAIRMAN exhibits to the witness a paper purporting to be a list of those men who were with Brown at Harper’s Ferry, and asks this: Question: Can you state the age of John Brown at that time? Answer: No, sir, except that I suppose him to have been almost 60 years of age. Question: What was the age of Owen Brown, as nearly as you can tell? Answer: Owen Brown was about 29 or 30. Question: Of Watson Brown? Answer: Watson Brown was not one of the original party, and I never knew him. Question: Of Oliver Brown? Answer: I never knew him. Question: Of Aaron D. Stevens? Answer: I did not know Stevens’s Christian name. His age was 28. He was 27 at the time of the convention. Question: Of Albert Hazlett? Answer: I never knew him. Question: Of John H. Kagi? HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Answer: Twenty-three at the time of the convention. Question: Of Edwin Coppic? Answer: I think I met him once or twice in Iowa, but never had any speaking acquaintance with him. He must have been about 18. Question: Of Barclay Coppic? Answer: I do not know him. He must have been a brother of the other, I suppose. Question: May you not have confounded the two Coppics? Answer: I may have done so. Question: What was the age of Charles P. Tidd? Answer: About twenty-five or twenty-six near the age of Stevens. Question: Are you speaking now of their ages at the time of the convention? Answer: Yes, sir. Question: What was the age of William H. Leeman? Answer: Not more than eighteen at the time of the convention. Question: Of Francis J. Meriam? Answer: I never knew him. Question: Of William Thompson? Answer: I never knew him. Question: Of Dolphin Thompson? Answer: I never knew him. Question: Of Jeremiah Anderson? Answer: A stranger to me. Question: Of Stewart Taylor? Answer: About nineteen at the time of the convention. Question: Of John E. Cook? Answer: Probably between twenty-three and twenty-four at the time of the convention. Question: Now, as to the Negroes with John Brown. What was the age of Shields Green? Answer: I never knew him. Question: John Copeland? Answer: A stranger to me. Question: Anderson? Answer: That must have been the Negro who accompanied us down from Chatham to Cleveland. He was about 24 or 25 years old. Question: Newby? Answer: I never knew him. Indeed, I knew no others, save those two Negroes, Anderson and Richardson, who afterwards returned from Cleveland to Canada. Question: The remaining Negro with Brown was named Leary; did you know him? Answer: I did not know him. I will give you my own age at that time. At the time of the convention I was not quite 24 years old. Question: Can you state whether the signatures to the paper, which you say was appended to the constitution, are the original signatures of those who made them. Answer: I saw the persons sign this document, and do testify thereto. In those cases where “his mark” follows the name, the mark was made by the person whose name appears, the writing HDT WHAT? INDEX

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having been done by Mr. Kagi. Question: Were you present when the paper was signed? Answer: I was. Question: Was it signed before the convention dispersed? Answer: Yes; before the convention dispersed, after the adoption of the constitution. Question: You have spoken of three persons who you there learned from Brown had supplied him with money. Do you know of any other persons with whom Brown was in communication upon the subject of getting money? Answer: I understood that a clergyman whose name is Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who, I believe, resides at Worcester, Massachusetts, was an intimate friend of John Brown, and that he, as were these other men, was one of those who supplied him with funds to enable him to prosecute his movements in behalf of freedom in Kansas, and who had given him a general promise to assist him in whatever enterprises he might undertake. Question: Can you recollect any others? Answer: I cannot. Question: Can you remember the names of any persons, in any of the States, with whom Brown, during your acquaintance with him, was in correspondence? Answer: No, sir. I do not believe that Brown was in correspondence with more than half-a-dozen people during my connection with him; for you must remember, that during our passage across Iowa, occupying a month, in which we camped out every night and walked across the plains every day, he could have no correspondence then. Immediately after we reached Springdale, in Iowa, he went on East. I could not be cognizant of his correspondence then, he being absent. Immediately on his return to Springdale, we departed for Canada, and on our passage thither we could not do anything in the way of correspondence. Just after we arrived there, the convention was held, and there was no chance for correspondence at that time. After the convention was disbanded, I left for New York City. Mr. COLLAMER. But you had been to Cleveland. The WITNESS: Yes; I went from Chatham to Cleveland and from Cleveland to New York. Mr. DOOLITTLE. I understood the witness to state that he, in general terms, communicated to Amy and to Hyatt, of New York, what he supposed was the general purpose of Brown — to produce an insurrection, or do something upon the South somewhere. The WITNESS: Yes, sir. Mr. DOOLITTLE. Then I ask you this question are those the only two persons to whom you ever communicated any such thing aside from those who went with you from Iowa to Canada, and those you met there? Answer: No, sir; there is one other. His name is Charles Carroll Yeaton, a young gentleman, formerly a very intimate friend of mine, but not an abolitionist. Mr. DOOLITTLE. Where does he reside? HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Answer: He resides now in New York. He was a junior partner in a banking and brokerage house in Wall Street. Mr. DOOLITTLE. Did you ever communicate to any other person, or have any conversation with any other person, in relation to this programme, except those three? Answer: No, sir; except as follows: during the time when we were in Iowa, and when it was thoroughly expected that, immediately on leaving Canada, we should go down into the South, I wrote a letter on some private matters to a lady, hinting therein that very probably she would hear of us again, and, perhaps, in the Southern States; but I never told her anything in regard to the plan. Those three persons are the only ones to whom I ever communicated anything about it. Mr. FITCH. Did John Brown admit to you, or state to you, that Forbes was fully cognizant of his plans, as far as he had formed them? Answer: Yes, sir; because Forbes at one period purposed to conduct the movement. The CHAIRMAN: As you understood from Brown? The WITNESS: As I understood from Brown; and you will permit me to say, that in any question of veracity arising between Forbes and Brown, I should, without hesitation, decide for Brown.

RICHARD REALF

March: Richard Realf joined the celibate Shaker community in Union Village, Ohio, becoming their public orator and demonstrating an ability to attract large crowds with a message of reform and abolitionism. He would try his hand, for a brief period, at being a perfectionist millenarian able to restrain himself from all carnal pleasures (the settlement had been for some time losing members of working age — and this flamboyant womanizing poet would be yet another of their losses).

Franklin Benjamin Sanborn fled to Canada.

To the dismay of the selectmen a spring festival sprang spontaneously to life at Sanborn’s school in Concord (I don’t know whether this occurred before or after his flight). Louisa May Alcott would report: Emerson spoke, and my song was sung. My song had a verse in it about John Brown, Wendell Phillips, and company, and some of the old fogies thought it better left out. But Mr. Emerson said, No, no, that is the best. It must be sung, and not only sung but read. He then read it right out loud, to my great surprise and HDT WHAT? INDEX

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pride. The narrow-minded of Concord will never dare say a word against it now. It was a lovely occasion, and has stirred up the stupid town immensely. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1861

April 19, Friday: President Abraham Lincoln issued a Proclamation of Blockade against Southern ports, and the 1st HDT WHAT? INDEX

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blood of civil warfare was shed.

US MILITARY INTERVENTIONS

On this “sacred date” of American independence, couriers rode along the route followed by Paul Revere in 1775 calling out regiments for a new war, and there was “the ringing of bells, the firing of cannon and the HDT WHAT? INDEX

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assembling of soldiers, as brave, true and prompt as those of olden times.”4

On this “sacred date” of American independence, as a detachment of four companies, C, D, I, and L, under Captain Albert S. Follansbee, of the 6th Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteer Militia (Infantry), and the brigade band of Lowell, Massachusetts, was passing through Baltimore, Maryland in its new blue uniforms on the way toward Fort Monroe in Virginia to defend for 3 months the nation’s capital, Washington DC, it was attacked by a secessionist mob of local citizens. The commanding officer ordered “Men file out. March as close as you possibly can. Fire on no man unless compelled.” The rioters were throwing stuff and shouting their support of the South, of Jefferson Davis, of secession from the union, and of South Carolina. The soldiers were soon firing indiscriminately into the crowd. The rioters had but did not use a cannon. The result of a march through city streets of a mile and a half was that 4 soldiers were killed and 36 wounded (I have been unable to determine the number of rioters the soldiers wounded, but 12 were killed). Private Luther Crawford Ladd was the 1st to be struck down, killed at the age of 17 when a bullet opened an artery in his thigh and he bled out, but Privates Addison Whitney and Charles Taylor, and Corporal Sumner Needham, were also fatalities. At the Chicago Public Library, filed under American Civil War Documents, Part 1, Series 18, #72.1018, is a poem written by Richard Realf, “Apocalypse” (on the verso of the 1st page are 8 lines of an unknown poem and the last 14 lines of “Mollie” in Realf’s hand, signed but undated). This poem celebrates “Private Arthur Ladd, 6th Regt. Mass. Vols. First Martyr in War for liberty of 1861-5. Murdered, Baltimore, Md., April 19, 1861.”5 US CIVIL WAR Apocalypse Straight to his heart the bullet crushed; Down from his breast the red blood gushed, And o’er his face a glory rushed. A sudden spasm shook his frame, And in his ears there went and came A sound as of devouring flame. Which in a moment ceased, and then The great light clasped his brows again, So that they shone like Stephen’s when Saul stood apart a little space And shook with shuddering awe to trace God’s splendors settling o’er his face. Thus, like a king, erect in pride, Raising clean hands toward heaven, he cried: ’All hail the Stars and Stripes!’ and died. Died grandly. But before he fell— (O blessedness ineffable!) Vision apocalyptical

4. Pullen, Doris L. and Donald B. Cobb. THE CELEBRATION OF APRIL THE NINETEENTH FROM 1776 TO 1960 IN LEXINGTON, MASSACHUSETTS. Lexington MA: Town Celebrations Committee, 1960, page 9. 5. When the Concord Soldiers’ Monument recording that “The Sons Defended What the Fathers Won” would be established in Monument Square upon a pedestal made of a stone from the abutment of the washed-away Old North Bridge 6 years later, an orator would remind the citizenry to be indignant at this Southern outrage, since when “our 6th Regiment was attacked in the streets of Baltimore, and the first blood was shed in defense of the American Union as it was, on the same day, in 1775,” that had been an injustice for “our boys were good boys” who had not been coming “with their hearts full of hatred.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Was granted to him, and his eyes, All radiant with glad surprise, Looked forward through the Centuries, And saw the seeds which sages cast In the world’s soil in cycles past, Spring up and blossom at the last; Saw how the souls of men had grown, And where the scythes of Truth had mown Clear space for Liberty’s white throne;

Saw how, by sorrow tried and proved, The blackening stains had been removed Forever from the land he loved; Saw Treason crushed and Freedom crowned, And clamorous Faction, gagged and bound, Gasping its life out on the ground. With far-off vision gazing clear Beyond this gloomy atmosphere Which shuts us out with doubt and fear He—marking how her high increase Ran greatening in perpetual lease Through balmy years of odorous Peace Greeted in one transcendent cry Of intense, passionate ecstasy The sight which thrilled him utterly; Saluting, with most proud disdain Of murder and of mortal pain, The vision which shall be again! So, lifted with prophetic pride, Raised conquering hands to heaven and cried: ’All hail the Stars and Stripes!’ and died.

Meanwhile an even fresher company of Concord volunteers “marched off for the Civil War.” They marched to the depot, that is, and took a train to Washington DC. Louisa May Alcott, watching this brave display, wrote:

I’ve often longed to see a war, and now I have my wish. I long to be a man; but as I can’t fight, I will content myself with working for those who can.

–You will pardon me if, in my inimitable manner, I become disgusted and insist on translating this as a masturbation fantasy which in the vernacular of the 20th Century would be something like “If I can’t fuck you, I need to kill you, and if I can’t kill you, I want you to kill somebody while I watch, and if I can’t watch, I want to fantasize about your killing somebody while you’re off doing it. (If you get wounded, that’ll work for me too.)” Is it any wonder that Henry Thoreau never wanted to get romantically involved with such a person as Louisa?

As the American Civil War began, Kit Carson would resign as federal Indian agent for northern New Mexico and join the New Mexico volunteer infantry that were being organized by Ceran St. Verain. Although the territory of New Mexico officially allowed slavery, this region’s geography and economics made the peculiar HDT WHAT? INDEX

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institution so peculiar that there were in fact very few slaves anywhere to be found. The territorial government and the leaders of opinion would therefore all throw their support to the Union. Carson would occupy himself during the civil war in organizing a New Mexico volunteer infantry on behalf of the Union. Overall command of Union forces in the Department of New Mexico would fall to Colonel Edward R.S. Canby of the Regular Army’s 19th Infantry, headquartered at Ft. Marcy in Santa Fe. Carson, provided with the rank of Colonel of Volunteers, would be in command of the 3d of Canby’s five columns. Carson would divide his 500 soldiers into two battalions, each consisting of four companies of the 1st New Mexico Volunteers. When the Navajo would attempt to take advantage of the military slack caused by the hostilities among the white people, the US federal government would delegate Colonel of Volunteers Carson to take care of the matter one way or another. His mission as the government understood it would be to get these native hostiles into a clump and sequester them at Fort Sumner in Reservation Bosque Redondo. When some of the natives hid in the Canyon de Chelly, Carson would begin a merciless scorched-earth campaign of burning fields and villages and killing livestock plus any Navajo he could locate. Once their fields of crops had been laid waste and their herds were rotting on the ground, the Navajos would realize that being shepherded onto a reservation in this manner was the sole manner in which they might hope to avoid starvation. John Knowles Paine gave his 3d concert in Berlin, just before leaving the city for London (he’d been in Berlin since August 1858).

Richard Realf penned the following poem in regard to the stimulating events of this day: Apocalypse Straight to his heart the bullet crushed; Down from his breast the red blood gushed, And o’er his face a glory rushed. A sudden spasm shook his frame, And in his ears there went and came A sound as of devouring flame. Which in a moment ceased, and then The great light clasped his brows again, So that they shone like Stephen’s when Saul stood apart a little space And shook with shuddering awe to trace God’s splendors settling o’er his face. Thus, like a king, erect in pride, Raising clean hands toward heaven, he cried: “All hail the Stars and Stripes!” and died. Died grandly. But before he fell— (O blessedness ineffable!) Vision apocalyptical Was granted to him, and his eyes, All radiant with glad surprise, Looked forward through the Centuries, And saw the seeds which sages cast In the world’s soil in cycles past, Spring up and blossom at the last; Saw how the souls of men had grown, And where the scythes of Truth had mown Clear space for Liberty’s white throne; HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Saw how, by sorrow tried and proved, The blackening stains had been removed Forever from the land he loved; Saw Treason crushed and Freedom crowned, And clamorous Faction, gagged and bound, Gasping its life out on the ground. With far-off vision gazing clear Beyond this gloomy atmosphere Which shuts us out with doubt and fear

He—marking how her high increase Ran greatening in perpetual lease Through balmy years of odorous Peace Greeted in one transcendent cry Of intense, passionate ecstasy The sight which thrilled him utterly; Saluting, with most proud disdain Of murder and of mortal pain, The vision which shall be again! So, lifted with prophetic pride, Raised conquering hands to heaven and cried: “All hail the Stars and Stripes!” and died.

[THOREAU MADE NO ENTRY IN HIS JOURNAL FOR APRIL 19th] HDT WHAT? INDEX

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–You will pardon me again, if again in my inimitable manner, I do not neglect to point out that this demonstration of Concordians marching off to war on April 19th demonstrated that the Concordians had utterly forgotten the lesson of April 19th, which had been that one ought not attack other people with harmful weapons in order to force them to behave as one believes they ought to behave? “Specimen Days”

CONTEMPTUOUS FEELING Even after the bombardment of Sumter, however, the gravity of the revolt, and the power and will of the slave States for a strong and continued military resistance to national authority, were not at all realized at the North, except by a few. Nine-tenths of the people of the free States look’d upon the rebellion, as started in South Carolina, from a feeling one-half of contempt, and the other half composed of anger and incredulity. It was not thought it would be join’d in by Virginia, North Carolina, or Georgia. A great and cautious national official predicted that it would blow over “in sixty days,” and folks generally believ’d the prediction. I remember talking about it on a Fulton ferry-boat with the Brooklyn mayor, who said he only “hoped the Southern fire-eaters would commit some overt act of resistance, as they would then be at once so effectually squelch’d, we would never hear of secession again — but he was afraid they never would have the pluck to really do anything.” I remember, too, that a couple of companies of the Thirteenth Brooklyn, who rendezvou’d [Page 708] at the city armory, and started thence as thirty days’ men, were all provided with pieces of rope, conspicuously tied to their musket-barrels, with which to bring back each man a prisoner from the audacious South, to be led in a noose, on our men’s early and triumphant return!

PATRIOTS’ DAY HDT WHAT? INDEX

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This article appeared in the Goodhue County Republican of Red Wing, Minnesota:

THE WAR’S BEGUN! –––– Maj. Anderson Summoned and Refuses to Surrender! –––– CHARLESTON BATTERIES OPEN THE FIRE! –––– Fort Sumter Reported on Fire! –––– HDT WHAT? INDEX

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REPORT OF ITS SURRENDER! –––– WASHINGTON IN DANGER! –––– Pennsylvania in the Field with Men and Money! ––––

CHARLESTON, APRIL 11 — Beauregard at two o’clock to- day demanded the surrender of Fort Sumter which Anderson declined. It is currently reported that the negotiation relative to the surrender will be opened to-morrow between Anderson and Beauregard. Special dispatches received at Washington to-day, assert that both Pickens and Sumter will be attacked, but they doubt if war follows. A Montgomery dispatch to-day says it has been resolved to attack the two forts immediately. Three steamers were seen off the coast yesterday for a long time. Anderson fired a signal gun this morning. The attack on Fort Sumter is momentarily expected. Business is suspended. No work is being done. It is rumored that the fight will commence at eight o’-clock this evening, unless Anderson surrender. The steamer Harriet Lane is off the bar. Thousands of persons line the shores to witness the attack. CHARLESTON, APRIL 12 — The ball has opened. War is inaugurated. The batteries of Sullivan’s Island, Morris Island and other points were opened on Fort Sumter at four o’clock this morning. Fort Sumter has returned the fire and a brisk cannonading has been kept up. No information has been received from the seaboard yet. The military are under arms, and the whole of our population are in the streets, and every available space facing the harbor is filled with anxious spectators. The firing has continued all day without intermission. Two of Fort Sumter’s guns have been silenced, and it is reported that a breach has been made in the southeast ward. The answer to Gen. Beauregard’s demand by Major Anderson was, that he would surrender when his supplies were exhausted; provided he was not reinforced.

May 16, Thursday: “P.M. Walk on Goat Island.”

Anne Isabella “Annabella” Noel Byron died of breast cancer. The body would be placed in Kensal Green Cemetery. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1862

August 25, Monday: New Ulm, Minnesota was evacuated. Colonel Henry Hastings Sibley remained at St. Peter awaiting more troops and calling for more supplies. RACE WAR IN MINNESOTA

The Chicago Public Library has in its American Civil War Documents, Part 1, Series 18, #72.547.A-B, a letter written by Richard Realf to Marian Gaines from “Camp Fuller, Chicago, Illinois,” signed “Volunteer.”

From this day until the 27th, Wednesday, there would be fighting at Manassas Station Operations. US CIVIL WAR

September 4, Thursday: A conference in Constantinople decided that the Turks would evacuate all fortresses in Serbia except Belgrade and 3 other cities.

We have no idea what had been going on with Richard Realf after he left the celibate Shaker community in Union Village, Ohio. Several full years of his life are unaccounted for. However, in this year we find him again aflame with abolitionist fervor, at Camp Douglas near Chicago enlisting in the Union army, with the 88th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment under Colonel Francis Trowbridge Sherman. This regiment would be ordered initially to Louisville, Kentucky. While in the military Realf would author romantic poetry, some of which would see publication in The Atlantic Monthly and Harper’s Monthly.

The Army of Northern Virginia crossed the Potomac River to tour Maryland. US CIVIL WAR HDT WHAT? INDEX

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October 1/2: Following the Battle of Antietam, President Abraham Lincoln reviewed the federal troops and fortifications at Harpers Ferry. He spent the night at the “Commanding Officer’s Quarters” on Camp Hill – the former residence of the Armory superintendent – and the next morning traveled over to Maryland Heights.

Brigadier General John Finegan established a battery on St. John’ s Bluff near Jacksonville, Florida to stop the movement of Federal ships up the St. Johns River. Brigadier General John M. had Brannan embarked on September 30th with about 1,500 infantry aboard the transports Boston, Ben DeFord, Cosmopolitan, and Neptune at Hilton Head SC. The flotilla arrived at the mouth of the St. John’s River on October 1st, where Commander Charles Steedman’ s gunboats –Paul Jones, Cimarron, Uncas, Patroon, Hale, and Water Witch– joined them. By midday, the gunboats approached the bluff, while Brannan began landing troops at Mayport Mills. Another infantry force landed at Mount Pleasant Creek, about five miles in the rear of the Confederate battery, and on the 2nd began marching overland. Outmaneuvered, Lieutenant Colonel Charles F. Hopkins abandoned the position after dark. When the gunboats would approach the bluff the next day, the 3rd of October, its guns would be silent.

The 88th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment began to pursue the forces of General Braxton Bragg into Kentucky (until the 16th). US CIVIL WAR

October 8, Wednesday: Fighting in Perryville, Kentucky forced the Confederate troops to retreat. The 88th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment took part in this battle, in which 1,355 were killed, 5,486 wounded, 766 missing. US CIVIL WAR

October 17, Friday: The 88th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment marched toward Nashville, Tennessee.

November 7, Friday: Professor Henri-Frédéric Amiel, who would be referred to as the “Swiss Thoreau,” wrote in his JOURNAL INTIME: “How malign, infectious, and unwholesome is the eternal smile of that indifferent criticism, that attitude of ironical contemplation, which corrodes and demolishes everything, that mocking pitiless temper, which holds itself aloof from every personal duty and every vulnerable affection, and cares only to understand without committing itself to action! Criticism become a habit, a fashion, and a system, means the destruction of moral energy, of faith, and of all spiritual force. One of my tendencies leads me in this direction, but I recoil before its results when I come across more emphatic types of it than myself. And at least I cannot reproach myself with having ever attempted to destroy the moral force of others; my reverence for life forbade it, and my self-distrust has taken from me even the temptation to it. This kind of temper is very dangerous among us, for it flatters all the worst instincts of men — indiscipline, irreverence, selfish individualism — and it ends in social atomism. Minds inclined to mere negation are only harmless in great political organisms, which go without them and in spite of them. The multiplication of them among ourselves will bring about the ruin of our little countries, for small states only live by faith and will. Woe to the society where negation rules, for life is an affirmation; and a society, a country, a nation, is a living whole capable of death. No nationality is possible without prejudices, for public spirit and national tradition are but webs woven out of innumerable beliefs which have been acquired, admitted, and continued without formal proof and without discussion. To act, we must believe; to believe, we must make up our minds, affirm, decide, and in reality prejudge the question. He who will only act upon a full scientific certitude is unfit for practical life. But we are made for action, and we cannot escape from duty. Let us not, then, condemn prejudice so long as we have nothing but doubt to put in its place, or laugh at those whom we should be incapable of HDT WHAT? INDEX

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consoling! This, at least, is my point of view. Beyond the element which is common to all men there is an element which separates them. This element may be religion, country, language, education. But all these being supposed common, there still remains something which serves as a line of demarcation — namely, the ideal. To have an ideal or to have none, to have this ideal or that — this is what digs gulfs between men, even between those who live in the same family circle, under the same roof or in the same room. You must love with the same love, think with the same thought as some one else, if you are to escape solitude. Mutual respect implies discretion and reserve even in love itself; it means preserving as much liberty as possible to those whose life we share. We must distrust our instinct of intervention, for the desire to make one’s own will prevail is often disguised under the mask of solicitude. How many times we become hypocrites simply by remaining the same outwardly and toward others, when we know that inwardly and to ourselves we are different. It is not hypocrisy in the strict sense, for we borrow no other personality than our own; still, it is a kind of deception. The deception humiliates us, and the humiliation is a chastisement which the mask inflicts upon the face, which our past inflicts upon our present. Such humiliation is good for us; for it produces shame, and shame gives birth to repentance. Thus in an upright soul good springs out of evil, and it falls only to rise again.”

The 88th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment arrived at Nashville, Tennessee (it would remain there until December 26th).

There was fighting at Clark’s Mill / Vera Cruz. US CIVIL WAR

November 27, Thursday: The 88th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment made a reconnaissance to Mill Creek in Tennessee. US CIVIL WAR

December 26, Friday-29, Monday: The 88th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment was advancing on Murfreesboro.

There was fighting at Chickasaw Bayou / Walnut Hills. US CIVIL WAR

December 30, Tuesday: When the Federal ironclad USS Monitor was lost in a storm off Cape Hatteras, 16 of the crew went down with the vessel and 47 were rescued.

Confederate President Jefferson Davis arrived in Mobile, Alabama, reviewed troops, and delivered an address.

The 88th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment fought at Lavergne. US CIVIL WAR HDT WHAT? INDEX

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December 31, Wednesday: There was fighting at Parker’s Cross Roads.

Confederate troops attacked Federal troops at Stones River / Murfreesboro, Tennessee and gained the advantage. The day cost 23,000 total casualties. Fighting would continue on the following day. One of my ancestors, Joseph Maynard, had signed up in Indiana, intending to use his enlistment bonus to buy himself a farm, and had marched off to this conflict, in which he was quickly wounded, a wound to which he would quickly succumb in the town’s sickbay crowded with wounded soldiers.

Private Joseph Maynard US CIVIL WAR President Abraham Lincoln signed a bill admitting West Virginia to the Union.

That evening a crowd of some 3,000 assembled at the Tremont Temple to count down the clock from 8PM HDT WHAT? INDEX

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until, at the last stroke of midnight, President Lincoln’s martial law declaration, written by Washington lawyers, attempting to weaken the enemy by offering a government program by which the slaves of the enemy might perhaps eventually, if they cooperated effectively with the Union armies, secure manumission papers, the so-called “Emancipation Proclamation,” would become effective.6 Speakers included not only Frederick Douglass but also the Reverend John Sella Martin and William Wells Brown, who were former slaves, and Anna M. Dickinson. At midnight they all marched to the 12th Baptist Church, which was popularly known at the time as the fugitive slave’s church, to be led in a prayer of thanksgiving by the black minister there, the Reverend Leonard Grimes.

Not many people present at this celebration on this evening would be making reference to the sort of words that the white man Abraham Lincoln had been using to reassure the white man Horace Greeley: If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that.

6. In fact President Abraham Lincoln’s own attitude toward an Emancipation Proclamation had been that it was, if it was anything, a mere military tactic of last resort. He would become famous in American history as “The Great Emancipator” not because of any affection for the American negro but only after the course of events had caused him to begin to muse in desperation that “Things have gone from bad to worse ... until I felt that we had played our last card, and must change our tactics or lose the game!” Never had a man been more reluctant to do the right. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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No, for purposes of the celebration on this evening, they were all agreeing to pretend to presume the presumption that we nowadays still prefer to presume — that this Honest Abe from Illinois had the best interests of Americans of color in his heart.

The 88th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment was one of the units that fought at the Battle of Stones River, from the 30th into the 3d (after the battle they would do duty at and near Murfreesboro until June).

RICHARD REALF HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1863

March 4, Wednesday: The 88th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment began a movement from Murfreesboro south toward Columbia, Tennessee (until the 14th).

“Domine salvum fac” for chorus and orchestra by John Knowles Paine was performed for the 1st time, in the First Parish Church of Cambridge, Massachusetts at the inaugural ceremonies of Thomas Hill as President of Harvard College.

May 15, Friday: Publication of Lieutenant Richard Realf’s “A Soldier’s Psalm of Woman” (as you see, I wasn’t able to bear through copying out the whole dreadful thing): Down all the shining lapse of days That grow and grow forever In truer love and better praise Of the Almighty Giver — ... Thank God! — O Love! whereby we know Beyond our little seeing, And feel serene compassions flow Around the ache of being; — Lo! clear o’er all the pain and dread Of our most sore affliction, The shining wings of Peace are spread In brooding benediction! US CIVIL WAR

June 24, Wednesday: Eugène Rouher replaced Pierre Jules Baroche as Minister President of the Council of State for France.

There was fighting at Hoover’s Gap. This fighting would continue until the 26th.

The 88th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment would be on a middle Tennessee (or Tullahoma) Campaign, until July 7th. It would then occupy middle Tennessee until August.

United States Yeoman Safford of the USS Constellation reported from Leghorn, Italy that “Captain Page of the Rebel Service is said to be here waiting for a vessel to come here from England for her armament.” US CIVIL WAR HDT WHAT? INDEX

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August 16, Sunday: At the invitation of Emperor Franz Joseph II of Austria, the German princes met in Frankfurt in an attempt to unify Germany (the attempt would fail).

The 88th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment passed through the Cumberland Mountains and crossed the Tennessee River to arrive before Chickamauga, Georgia (completing this movement on September 22d).

Informing his readership that he was going South to recruit black soldiers for the Union’s colored troop formations, Frederick Douglass ended his 15-year career as editor, and ceased publication of the Douglass’ Monthly, successor to The North Star and Frederick Douglass’ Paper. HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

US CIVIL WAR HDT WHAT? INDEX

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September 19, Saturday: Federal and Confederate forces met along a 10-kilometer front at Lee & Gordon’s Mill on the Chickamauga Creek in Georgia south of Chattanooga, Tennessee. After a brief period of fighting, Union forces retreated into the town, while the Confederacy maintained control of the battlefield. The heavy fighting produced high casualties but negligible results. After Federal General Rosecrans’s debacle at Chickamauga, Confederate General Braxton Bragg’s army occupied the mountains that ring the vital railroad center of Chattanooga. US CIVIL WAR

The 88th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment participated in this battle, and Richard Realf survived.

Among the corpses that littered the field of battle near Chickamauga Creek was that of Dr. Josiah Clark Nott’s and Sarah (Sally) Deas Nott’s son James Deas Nott II.7

7. In case you’re wondering: since concern over the right to keep and bear arms as guaranteed in the Bill of Rights of the federal Constitution is a concern that has arisen in post-Civil War years, the Liberty for which they died could only have been either 1.) the right to leave the federal union, 2.) the right to own other human beings, or 3.) a combination of the above. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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“It is a consolation to those who mourn their loss and erect this monument to know that they died in defence [sic] of Liberty and left behind untarnished names.”

September 20, Sunday: After the dust-up just south of Chattanooga, the Federals stopped the Confederate advance but retreated in great disorder to the north. The fighting had produced 34,500 total casualties. President Abraham Lincoln appointed General Ulysses S. Grant to command all operations in the western theater. US CIVIL WAR

September 24, Thursday: Rear-Admiral Sir George Back was promoted to vice-admiral.

The 88th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment participated in the siege of Chattanooga (until November 23d). US CIVIL WAR HDT WHAT? INDEX

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November: This would be the month of the Battle for Chattanooga. Grant, brought in to save the situation, was steadily building up offensive strength, and on November 23-25th his forces would in a series of brilliantly executed attacks burst the blockade. The Union forces would push the Confederate troops away from Chattanooga. This victory would set the stage for General Sherman’s Atlanta Campaign. US CIVIL WAR

After Confederate President Jefferson Davis had inspected the army of Braxton Bragg near Chattanooga, Tennessee during the previous month, he had gone on a tour with numerous public appearances through Alabama, eastern Mississippi, Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina, and would return to Richmond, Virginia on November 7th.

In the 88th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment outside Chattanooga, Richard Realf was promoted to 1st Lieutenant and Adjutant.

November 3, Tuesday: The Rush Street Bridge over the Chicago River, built in 1857, was destroyed in an accident.

Schleswig was made a Danish province.

The Chicago Public Library has among its American Civil War Documents, Part 1, Series 18, #72.1016, a letter written by Richard Realf in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

There was fighting at Collierville. US CIVIL WAR HDT WHAT? INDEX

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November 23, Monday: Fighting began at Chattanooga, that would continue into Wednesday the 25th. The 88th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment, participating in the Chattanooga-Ringgold Campaign, saw action at Orchard Knob. US CIVIL WAR

Henry Thoreau’s EXCURSIONS: HDT WHAT? INDEX

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November 25, Wednesday: Professor Henri-Frédéric Amiel, who would be referred to as the “Swiss Thoreau,” wrote in his JOURNAL INTIME: “Prayer is the essential weapon of all religions. He who can no longer pray because he doubts whether there is a being to whom prayer ascends and from whom blessing descends, he indeed is cruelly solitary and prodigiously impoverished. And you, what do you believe about it? At this moment I should find it very difficult to say. All my positive beliefs are in the crucible ready for any kind of metamorphosis. Truth above all, even when it upsets and overwhelms us! But what I believe is that the highest idea we can conceive of the principle of things will be the truest, and that the truest truth is that which makes man the most wholly good, wisest, greatest, and happiest. My creed is in transition. Yet I still believe in God, and the immortality of the soul. I believe in holiness, truth, beauty; I believe in the redemption of the soul by faith in forgiveness. I believe in love, devotion, honor. I believe in duty and the moral conscience. I believe even in prayer. I believe in the fundamental intuitions of the human race, and in the great affirmations of the inspired of all ages. I believe that our higher nature is our truer nature. Can one get a theology and a theodicy out of this? Probably, but just now I do not see it distinctly. It is so long since I have ceased to think about my own metaphysic, and since I have lived in the thoughts of others, that I am ready even to ask myself whether the crystallization of my beliefs is necessary. Yes, for preaching and acting; less for studying, contemplating and learning.”

Sarah F. Wakefield had printed a job lot of her SIX WEEKS IN THE SIOUX TEPEES, in 54 pages, on rough paper inside colored covers.8 Presumably the intent of the publication was both to defend her friends among the

8. SIX WEEKS IN THE SIOUX TEPEES: A NARRATIVE OF INDIAN CAPTIVITY / BY SARAH F. WAKEFIELD HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Dakota insofar as they might be defended in the climate of white hatred which existed at the moment, and to defend her standing as a wife and mother9 against the allegation that she was thus friendly with the racial enemy because she had allowed herself to be seduced by one of their young warriors, Chasca.10 It was constantly reported and many believed that I was his wife, and I dared not [during my captivity] contradict it, but rather encouraged everyone to believe so, for I was in fear all the while that Hapa would find out we had deceived him. I did not consider the consequences outside of the Indian camp, for I had my doubts all the while of my getting away. I supposed if I was ever so fortunate as to get back I could explain all, never once thinking people would consider me a liar, as many call me. Mine is a sad case, after all I have passed through, to receive now so many reproaches from those that I thought would pity me. MINNESOTA

Federal attackers including the 88th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment broke the Confederate defenders of Missionary Ridge west of Chattanooga, forcing them to retreat south into Georgia. The fighting produced 12,400 total casualties. Richard Realf would be twice recommended to President Abraham Lincoln for dashing feats of personal valor with the 88th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment, 1st at Chickamauga and then at Missionary Ridge. His bearing of the colors to the front at Missionary Ridge has been described by Colonel Richard Josiah Hinton: The dark winding line climbed ever up and up, one regiment moving eagerly to the front. The heavy fire from the enemy’s rifle-pits belched forth, and the blue line, yet unformed, momentarily broke. The flag rose, and then suddenly fell to the ground, for the bearer had been shot. It seemed minutes, but it was not really a second of time, when clearly against the hazy autumn sky a slight, lithe figure, sword in hand, was seen to dash out from the swaying ranks. The flag was raised and swung aloft, as the soldier faced the command behind. Cheers were borne to the straining ears of appreciative generals and then the whole line swung swiftly forward to bayonet point under a terrific rifle fire. At the forefront was seen the soldier with pointing blade and waving colors leading the way. A moment more and the rifle- pits were reached. A second’s clash and the flag was there above the low line of rifle-pits. Over the works went the Eighty- eighth Illinois. US CIVIL WAR

9. At this point the family had two children, James Orin Wakefield and Lucy “Nellie, my baby” Wakefield. Later on the family would add another girl, Julia E. Wakefield, and another boy, John R. Wakefield. 10. Chasca was a very common name as it meant merely “firstborn son.” This would lead to bureaucratic confusion, and to his execution, despite the pleas of Mrs. Wakefield that in fact he had saved the lives of her and her two children. HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

November 28, Monday: While traveling from Mainz to Löwenberg, Richard Wagner stopped at the home of Hans von Bülow in Berlin. In the afternoon, as von Bülow was rehearsing, Wagner and Francesca Gaetana Cosima Liszt von Bülow went for a cab ride through Berlin. They both would regard this as the beginning of their serious relationship. (At this point Cosima was already the mother of 3-year-old Daniela von Bülow and infant Blandina Elisabeth Veronica von Bülow, but obviously they weren’t along for this “tears and sobs” and “we sealed our confession to belong to each other alone” Romantic cab ride through the city.)

The 88th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment marched to the relief of Knoxville, Tennessee (until December 8th). US CIVIL WAR

December: The 88th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment was campaigning in East Tennessee (into February). US CIVIL WAR

Late in this year, and continuing through the next, Frederick Douglass would be delivering many times an oration entitled “The Mission of the War” in which he would be declaring, in response to Abraham Lincoln’s sentiment “I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence,” the counter-sentiment “We want a country which shall not brand the Declaration of Independence as a lie.” “I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence.” — Abraham Lincoln

“We want a country which shall not brand the Declaration of Independence as a lie.” — Frederick Douglass HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1864

When Confederate troops looted a store in Sandy Spring, Maryland; a posse of locals including local Friends set out in pursuit, engaged them near Rockville in a skirmish known as the Battle of Ricketts Run, killed their leader, and recovered the purloined goods. US CIVIL WAR THE QUAKER PEACE TESTIMONY

The Reverend Moncure Daniel Conway’s article for The Atlantic Monthly “Benjamin Banneker, the Negro Astronomer” was republished as a pamphlet in England.11

In about this timeframe, the Reverend was also having published as a pamphlet in England another of his efforts, under the title “The Spiritual Serfdom of the Laity.”12

In about this timeframe the Reverend reminisced: It is quite different from any I have ever seen. So beautiful and cheerful was this Quaker neighborhood, with its bright homes, and fields filled with happy laborers, the only happy negroes I have anywhere known,13 that I always experienced an exhilaration in riding there, and have often gone several miles out of my way to go through it to my appointments. I could tell the very line on the ground where the ordinary Maryland ended and the Quaker region began. I found on further acquaintance that I was in a place where mental culture was general, where there was a good circulating library and excellent schools, and the interior life of Sandy Spring more attractive even than the exterior.14

11. Moncure Daniel Conway. BENJAMIN BANNEKER. THE NEGRO ASTRONOMER. Reprinted from the Atlantic Monthly, by M.D. Conway. Pamphlet. London: Printed and Published for the Ladies London Emancipation Society by Emily Faithfull, Printer and Publisher in Ordinary to Her Majesty, Victoria Press. 1864. READ THE FULL TEXT

12. Moncure Daniel Conway. THE SPIRITUAL SERFDOM OF THE LAITY. BY M.D. CONWAY. Pamphlet. Published by Thomas Scott, Ramsgate. READ THE FULL TEXT

13. Josiah Henson would write about his experience with slavery in a memoir alleging that his life story had been a basis for Harriet Beecher Stowe’s UNCLE TOM’S CABIN in 1852, as the alleged inspiration for the character “Uncle Tom.” A slave cabin in which Henson is believed to have spent time still stands at the end of a driveway off Old Georgetown Road. 14. The Reverend Conway corresponded for decades with an elder of the Sandy Spring Monthly Meeting there, Friend William Henry Farquhar. HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

In this crucial election held in the midst of war, the coining of the new term “miscegenation” as the term of choice for the fertile fusion and merging of the human races, to replace or supplement the older term “amalgamation” which ambiguously also indicated the restoration of the federal union, became a central focus, largely as the result of a anonymous-pamphlet hoax perpetrated by the anti-abolitionists David G. Croley and George Wakeman in New-York. The hoax was that while said pamphlet pretended to be an argument in favor of race mixture as our salvation, actually it was being offered in argument by a couple of white journalistic gents who were supposing race mixture to be the very worst thing which might ever happen to us as a nation:15 The Anthropological Society was incensed by an anonymous pamphlet published in London and New York in that year, entitled MISCEGENATION: THE THEORY OF THE BLENDING OF THE RACES APPLIED TO THE AMERICAN WHITE MAN AND NEGRO. It was with this book that the word “miscegenation” was first introduced, and the impact of this book can be measured from the fact that it caught on immediately. The authors began with a short definition of the term, as well as a cluster of other mostly nonce-words: miscegen, miscegenate, miscegenetic, melaleukation, melaleukon, melaleuketic (the last three terms, from the Greek melas (black) and leukos (white) leading to a further term melamigleukation, “the union of the races.” The strategy involved the production of a new word that would have the more specific meaning of actual racial mixture than the customary term “amalgamation,” which doubled as the term for the restoration of the Union. MISCEGENATION consisted of an audacious, cheeky attack on the thesis of the pro-slavery anthropologists Morton, Nott and Gliddon that claimed inevitable decline to be the effect of the mixing of the races. The authors invoke instead another common argument, to be cited by Darwin in THE DESCENT OF MAN, that a cross with “civilized races” makes “an aboriginal race” more fertile. In MISCEGENATION, the authors advance the proposition that miscegenation, far from producing degeneration as Gobineau and his American sympathizers had claimed, would have altogether beneficial effects, in this case by arresting the people of the United States from their alleged current decline, and increasing their fertility and vigour so as to form them into a new super- race: Whatever of power and vitality there is in the American race is derived, not from its Anglo-Saxon progenitors, but from all the different nationalities which go to make up this people. All that is needed to make it the finest race on earth is to engraft upon our stock the negro element which Providence has placed by our side on this continent.... We must become a yellow-skinned, black- haired people –in fine we must become Miscegens– if we would attain the fullest results of civilization (MISCEGENATION, pages 18, 28). Well, isn’t that something, as provocations go! And yet these anonymous New-York anti-abolitionist agents

15. Young, Robert J.C. COLONIAL DESIRE: HYBRIDITY IN THEORY, CULTURE AND RACE. London: Routledge, 1995 (page 144). HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

provocateur newsies weren’t far off their mark, for in fact there were persons in that period in whom such provocative thoughts would resonate. One person in whom they had encouraged provocative thoughts was the Reverend Conway, who would argue that “the mixture of the blacks and whites is good.” Well, that might be correct, but in that era it was definitely the wrong opinion to have, if one wanted to be of influence in that society. The Reverend would argue “I believe that such a combination would evolve a more complete character than the unmitigated Anglo-Saxon.” He would argue that rather than attempting to rear a new nationality, here in America, “we have to rear a new race.”16 He would argue that “it is well to remember that Miscegenation is already the irreversible fact of Southern Society in every thing but the recognition of it,” that “the mixture of blood has been very extensive,” that “These Southerners have proved that the repulsion of the alliance of the two bloods extends only to so much of it as the parson and magistrate have anything to do with.” –But in the making of such impolitic arguments, in that period, he would be merely disenfranchising himself and his followers precisely as these anonymous New-York anti-abolitionist agents provocateur newsies desired that such persons disenfranchise themselves!

For the science of the day would not support this:

[see descriptive quotation]

16. By the sheerest coincidence the Reverend Conway had a relative down in Virginia who was doing precisely that. During the 1840s his uncle George Washington Conway had fallen in love with a neighbor’s slave, of mixed race, and gotten her pregnant. Then he had done the decent thing. Marry her? –No, that decent thing was quite impossible in Virginia, so he had done the next best, he had purchased her. They had simply matched the external pretense, the pretense of the law, that she was enslaved, with an internal pretense, the pretense of the heart, that she was enwifed. He had become de facto her loving husband. We don’t know much about this couple, for such people quickly became invisible in the Old South, but we do know that in 1852 they had been living on a small farm in the woods with an elderly black woman, and with their two mixed-race children. (Legally, the black woman, the mulatto woman, and the two mulatto children were all the slaves of G.W. Conway — but the only way we can distinguish this George Washington Conway in the records from which he is almost totally absent, as a white man, is that in these records, such as in the two censuses which were taken during his lifetime, he is listed under his full name within a context in which everyone around him has only a given name. Moncure would comment that “Even my father declares that he is the best-hearted of the family.”) HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

The way in which [Robert Dale] Owen dwells on the physical details of the diseases of the Canadian refugees [in his 1864 treatise THE WRONG OF SLAVERY, THE RIGHT OF EMANCIPATION, AND THE FUTURE OF THE AFRICAN RACE IN THE UNITED STATES] is symptomatic of the phobia and fascination that the idea of miscegenation summons forth in the white imagination. As we have seen, 19th-Century scientists seemed particularly prone to such hostile obsessions and ambivalent fantasies. Take, for example, the reaction of the Swiss-American ethnologist, Louis Agassiz, Professor of Zoology at Harvard and contributor to TYPES OF MANKIND, when invited to comment to the American Freedmen’s Inquiry Commission on the prospect for emancipated slaves in the United States, with particular reference to the question of whether they would amalgamate with the whites, and whether the mulattos would be prolific in reproducing themselves or die out as Nott had claimed. Agassiz’s own theory of the geographical distribution of the races led him to argue that blacks and whites would segregate naturally, with the white going North and the Blacks south. The mulattos, weak and infertile, he claimed, would die out. Rehearsing the argument of Nott, Agassiz similarly finds himself not entirely convinced by his own scientific racial theory. He cannot bear from dwelling on the overriding nightmare of the possibility of amalgamation: The production of halfbreeds is as much a sin against purity of character.... Far from presenting to me a natural solution of our difficulties, the idea of amalgamation is most repugnant to my feelings, I hold it to be a perversion of every natural sentiment.... No efforts should be spared to check that which is abhorrent to our better nature, and to the progress of a higher civilization and a purer morality. ...Disgust always bears the imprint of desire: Agassiz goes on to suggest that the effect of such philandering with mixed-race servants is that the white Southern male increasingly acquires a taste for pure black women: “This blunts his better instincts in that direction and leads him gradually to seek more spicy partners, as I have heard the full blacks called by fast young men.” At this point Agassiz articulates the unspeakable, and opens up the basis of the necessity for why so much racial theory is based on the insistence on inalienable separation: not only the fear, and delicious fantasy, that the white woman really wants to proclaim “I love the black man,” but an avowal of the sexual desire of white men for black women. Once again, as in Gobineau, we find and ambivalent driving desire at the heart of racialism: a compulsive libidinal attraction disavowed by an equal insistence on repulsion ... an ambivalence nicely illustrated in Agassiz’s [and Mrs. Louis Agassiz’s] own A JOURNEY IN BRAZIL [London: Trübner, 1868], where [Professor] Agassiz’s revulsion against “half-breed” mixed-race populations –“a mongrel crowd as repulsive as the mongrel dogs”– is matched by his wife’s fascination for the “fine-looking athletic negroes” from West Africa whom, she writes, she never tires of watching in the street and the market. AUTOBIOGRAPHY VOLUME II HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

As part of the propaganda that our civil war was not just a bloody mess but a noble cause –that it had moral purpose, that the North was standing on moral high ground– a number of photographs began to circulate, the intent of which was to demonstrate to all and sundry that slavery wasn’t merely something that happened only to Americans who were noticeably “of color,” but was something that might happen even to me and mine or even to you and yours:

(There’s no reason, of course, to suspect that this photograph has been in any way faked. There were in fact light-mulatto slaves in the American South, just as there were free light mulattoes in the American North, who looked just about as white as white gets — but who were still in the South being treated as “just another slave,” and were still in the North being treated as “just another nigger.” If, for instance, you ever get a chance to look at photographs of the “black” students being educated by Prudence Crandall in Connecticut –remember the fuss and feathers as local citizens threw rocks through the windows of her school and attempted to set it on HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

fire?– you will be hard put to make out that these young ladies were not perfectly white.) Carleton Mabee’s BLACK FREEDOM

Americans at large often held the abolitionists responsible for the war. They argued that the abolitionists’ long agitation, strident as it often was, had antagonized the South into secession, thus beginning the war, and that the abolitionists’ insistence that the war should not end until all slavery had been abolished kept the war going. In 1863 the widely read New York Herald made the charge devastatingly personal. It specified that by being responsible for the war, each abolitionist had in effect already killed one man and permanently disabled four others.… While William Lloyd Garrison preferred voluntary emancipation, during the war he came to look with tolerance on the abolition of slavery by military necessity, saying that from seeming evil good may come. Similarly, the Garrisonian-Quaker editor, Oliver Johnson, while also preferring voluntary emancipation, pointed out that no reform ever triumphed except through mixed motives. But the Garrisonian lecturer Pillsbury was contemptuous of such attitudes. Freeing the slaves by military necessity would be of no benefit to the slave, he said in 1862, and the next year when the Emancipation Proclamation was already being put into effect, he said that freeing the slaves by military necessity could not create permanent peace. Parker Pillsbury won considerable support for his view from abolitionist meetings and from abolitionist leaders as well. Veteran Liberator writer Edwin Percy Whipple insisted that “true welfare” could come to the American people “only through a willing promotion of justice and freedom.” Henry C. Wright repeatedly said that only ideas, not bullets, could permanently settle the question of slavery. The recent Garrisonian convert, the young orator Ezra Heywood, pointed out that a government that could abolish slavery as a military necessity had no antislavery principles and could therefore re-establish slavery if circumstances required it. The Virginia aristocrat-turned-abolitionist, Moncure Daniel Conway, had misgivings that if emancipation did not come before it became a fierce necessity, it would not reflect true benevolence and hence could not produce true peace. The Philadelphia wool merchant, Quaker Alfred H. Love, asked, “Can so sublime a virtue as … freedom … be the offspring of so corrupt a parentage as war?” The long-time abolitionist Abby Kelley Foster –the speak-inner and Underground Railroader– predicted flatly, if the slave is freed only out of consideration for the safety of the Union, “the hate of the colored race will still continue, and the poison of that wickedness will destroy us as a nation.” Amid the searing impact of the war –the burning fields, the mangled bodies, the blood-splattered hills and fields– a few abolitionists had not forgotten their fundamental belief that to achieve humanitarian reform, particularly if it was to be thorough and permanent reform, the methods used to achieve it must be consistent with the nature of the reform. … What abolitionists often chose to brush aside was that after the war most blacks would still be living in the South, among the same Confederates whom they were now trying to kill. HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

January 11, Monday: Father Isaac Hecker, wrote to Orestes Augustus Brownson.

La fiancée du Roi de Garbe, an opéra comique by Daniel-François-Esprit Auber to words of Scribe and Saint- Georges, was performed for the initial time, at the Théâtre Favart, Paris. In the audience was an increasingly infirm Giacomo Meyerbeer.

Neckereien op.31/2 for vocal quartet by Johannes Brahms to anonymous words was performed for the initial time, in Vienna, conducted by the composer.

The Chicago Public Library has among its American Civil War Documents, Part 1, Series 18, #72.1014, a letter Richard Realf wrote to “My dear friends” from 25 miles east of Knoxville, Tennessee.

Senator John B. Henderson of Missouri submitted a joint resolution of the federal Senate and the federal House of Representatives for a XIIIth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ending the institution of human enslavement in the United States of America.17

US CIVIL WAR

January 31, Sunday: Studentenlust op.285, a waltz by Johann Strauss, was performed for the initial time, in the Redoutensaal, Vienna.

The Chicago Public Library has among its American Civil War Documents, Part 1, Series 18, #72.1013 a letter written on this day by the Union soldier Richard Realf.

17. The Senate Judiciary Committee, under the chairmanship of Senator Lyman Trumbull of Illinois, would involve itself in merging different proposals for such an Amendment. For instance, this committee would reject the proposal by Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts and Representative Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania for the expansive wording “All persons are equal before the law, so that no person can hold another as a slave; and the Congress shall have power to make all laws necessary and proper to carry this declaration into effect everywhere in the United States” (such wording was of course problematic because there are all sorts of ways in which various persons are most decidedly not equal before the law; for instance, one person might be a citizen and the other a noncitizen, or one a male and the other a female, or one an adult and the other a child, or one a member of the white race and the other not, or one have a criminal record and the other not, et cetera ad infinitum). HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

February 9, Tuesday: A committee was formed in Geneva, led by Henry Dunant, to investigate possible international agreements concerning the treatment of wounded on the battlefield. This was the beginning of the International Committee of the Red Cross.

In the largest prison escape of the war, 109 Union officers tunneled out of Libby Prison in Richmond, Virginia. 59 would reach Federal lines, 48 would be recaptured, and two would drown.

The Chicago Public Library has among its American Civil War Documents, Part 1, Series 18, #72.544 a letter written from Loudon, Tennessee by Richard Realf to “My dear friend.” In the letter the poet soldier expresses admiration for the personal qualities and policies of President Abraham Lincoln. On this day the President was posing for the photograph that now appears on our $5 bill. CIVIL WAR

February 19, Friday: Richard Realf of the 88th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment wrote to Laura B. Merritt from Loudon, Tennessee (LEAVES OF GRASS, religion, soldier’s philosophy).

The Renegade for double male chorus by Bedrich Smetana to words of Metlinskij translated by Celakovsky was performed for the initial time.

March 8, Tuesday: Richard Realf of the 88th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment wrote to Laura B. Merritt from Loudon, Tennessee (illness, kindness of soldiers, philosophy).

March 15, Tuesday: Richard Realf of the 88th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment wrote to Laura B. Merritt from Loudon, Tennessee (depression, religion).

March 31, Thursday: British forces attacked Maori positions at Orakau. The Maori easily defeated this and the British settled in for a siege.

Richard Realf of the 88th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment wrote to Laura B. Merritt from Loudon, Tennessee (religion, lack of direction). The Chicago Public Library has among its American Civil War Documents, Part 1, Series 18, #72.548 another letter written on this day by Richard Realf to “My dear friend,” one in which he wrote supporting President Abraham Lincoln for re-election. US CIVIL WAR HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

April: The brewery on St. Helena was destroyed by fire.

The 88th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment left Loudon, Tennessee heading toward Cleveland (until May).

There hadn’t been any slavery on the island of St. Helena, for a good long time, and notice, this wondrous thing had been achieved without any recourse to civil war. However, during this month, in the midst of a civil war, when an amendment to the United States Constitution abolishing slavery was passed by the federal Senate, that proposal would die there (during June it would fail to obtain the 2/3ds vote required to pass in the House of Representatives — it would not be enacted by the House until the afternoon of January 31, 1865, when a vote would be obtained of Yeas 119, Nays 56, not voting 8). “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States ...” US CIVIL WAR

April 9, Saturday: Richard Realf of the 88th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment wrote to Laura B. Merritt from Loudon, Tennessee (regiment library).

There was fighting at Pleasant Hill. Fighting began at Prairie D’Ane / Gum Grove / Moscow that would continue into the 13th. US CIVIL WAR

April 16, Saturday: Richard Realf of the 88th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment wrote to Laura B. Merritt from Loudon, Tennessee (medical inspectors, poetry, Harper’s Weekly, politics).

A report appeared in the New-York Herald of the events of April 12th at Fort Pillow: “Reported Massacre of the White and Black Troops.” “Women and Children Murdered in Cold Blood.” Two small maps showed the position of Fort Pillow on the Mississippi River. US CIVIL WAR HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

May: Companies F and G of the 37th Regiment United States Colored Infantry were mustered and joined the earlier companies. Company H would then be added, and the regiment would be ordered to the front during the siege of Petersburg. It would then be ordered to the forts at Wilson’s and Harrison’s Landings, on the James River. DANIEL FOSTER

The 88th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment engaged in the Atlanta, Georgia Campaign (until September). RICHARD REALF

General Ulysses S. Grant, promoted to commander of the Union armies, planned to engage General Robert E. Lee’s forces in Virginia until they were destroyed. During this month North and South would meet and engage in an inconclusive 3-day Battle of the Wilderness. General Lee would inflict more casualties on the Union forces than his own army would incur — but unlike General Grant he would have no replacements.

Stephen Elliott, who had been promoted to Lieutenant Colonel, was relieved from command of the ruins of Fort Sumter upon the arrival of his replacement, Captain John C. Mitchel.18 US CIVIL WAR

18. This is not the Professor Stephen Elliott of South Carolina whose botany textbook Henry Thoreau consulted, but his grandson. HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

May 2, Monday: At 5:40AM, Giacomo Meyerbeer died in Paris at the age of 72.

Richard Realf of the 88th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment wrote to Laura B. Merritt (religion).

President Jefferson Davis sent a major message to the Confederate Congress. US CIVIL WAR

May 5, Thursday: Saison-Quadrille op.283 by Johann Strauss was performed for the initial time, in Pavlovsk.

Confederate forces attacked Federal forces on the Orange Turnpike in the “Wilderness” west of Fredericksburg. In confused fighting, no lasting advantage could be gained by either side.

The 88th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment participated in a movement on Dalton, Georgia (until the 9th).

There was fighting at Albemarle Sound. US CIVIL WAR

May 6, Friday: A funeral ceremony for Giacomo Meyerbeer took place in the Gare du Nord, Paris. Some of his music was performed before the body was placed on a train for Berlin.

Federal advances in the Wilderness, west of Fredericksburg, Virginia were checked and a Confederate counterattack began. The southrons made advances but the battlefield was so confused that they began shooting at their own units. Federal forces managed to halt the advance. Over a period of a couple of days there had been a total of 25,166 casualties.

The Chicago Public Library has among its American Civil War Documents, Part 1, Series 18, #72.1015 a letter written by Richard Realf from Coosa [?] Springs, Georgia (this was the day prior to the beginning of General William Tecumseh Sherman’s march through Georgia).

There was fighting at Port Walthall Junction, that would continue into the following day. US CIVIL WAR

May 8, Sunday: There was fighting at Corbin’s Bridge, Georgia. The 88th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment participated in the fighting at Buzzard’s Roost Gap, Georgia (until the 9th) and made a demonstration on Rocky Face Ridge, Georgia (until the 11th). General Ulysses S. Grant was continuing to attack General Robert E. Lee, until May 21st, fully aware that he could replace casualties but Lee could not. At Spotsylvania Court House north of Richmond, Virginia he vowed to fight all summer if necessary. US CIVIL WAR

May 9, Monday: The 88th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment made a demonstration on Dalton, Georgia (until the 13th). There was fighting at Cloyd’s Mountain. There was fighting at Swift Creek / Arrowfield Church. At Spotsylvania Court House, General John Sedgwick was killed by a distant Confederate sniper. US CIVIL WAR HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

Famous Last Words:

“What school is more profitably instructive than the death-bed of the righteous, impressing the understanding with a convincing evidence, that they have not followed cunningly devised fables, but solid substantial truth.” — A COLLECTION OF MEMORIALS CONCERNING DIVERS DECEASED MINISTERS, Philadelphia, 1787 “The death bed scenes & observations even of the best & wisest afford but a sorry picture of our humanity. Some men endeavor to live a constrained life — to subject their whole lives to their will as he who said he might give a sign if he were conscious after his head was cut off — but he gave no sign Dwell as near as possible to the channel in which your life flows.” —Thoreau’s JOURNAL, March 12, 1853

1864 General John Sedgwick Battle of Spotsylvania “They couldn't hit an elephant at this dis- tance.”

1865 Abraham Lincoln on stage, an actor ad-libbed a reference The President laughed to the presence of the President

1865 John Wilkes Booth with his leg broken, surrounded by “Useless ... useless.” relentlessly angry armed men, in a burning barn

1872 Samuel F.B. Morse doctor tapped on his chest and said: “Very good, very good.” “This is the way we doctors telegraph, Professor.”

1872 Horace Greeley Whitelaw Reid took over the Tribune “You son of a bitch, you stole my newspa- per!”

1881 Billy the Kid in the dark, he heard Pat Garrett enter “Who is it?”

1882 Charles Darwin fundamentalists tell lying stories of his “I am not the least afraid to die.” abandoning his heretical theories in favor of Christ Jesus and His salvation

1883 Sojourner Truth advice for us all “Be a follower of the Lord Jesus.” ... other famous last words ... HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

May 13, Friday-15, Sunday: The 88th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment participated in the Battle Of Resaca, Georgia. CIVIL WAR

May 17, Tuesday: The 88th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment participated in the fighting at Adairsville, Georgia. CIVIL WAR

May 18, Wednesday: The 88th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment participated in the fighting near Kingston, Georgia (into the following day). There was fighting at Yellow Bayou / Norwood’s Plantation. CIVIL WAR

May 19, Thursday: The 88th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment participated in the fighting near Cassville, Georgia. CIVIL WAR

May 24, Tuesday: The 88th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment was advancing toward Dallas, Georgia. People were continuing to kill each other at North Anna / Jericho Mill / Hanover Junction. In addition, on this day, people were killing each other at Wilson’s Wharf / Fort Pocahontas. US CIVIL WAR HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

In Concord on this day, however, people were burying each other. Waldo Emerson recorded in his journal that:

Yesterday, May 23, we buried Hawthorne in Sleepy Hollow, in a pomp of HAWTHORNE sunshine and verdure, and gentle winds. James Freeman Clarke read the service in the church and at the grave. Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes, Agassiz, Hoar, Dwight, Whipple, Norton, Alcott, Hillard, Fields, Judge LONGFELLOW Thomas, and I attended the hearse as pallbearers. Franklin Pierce was J.R. LOWELL with the family. The church was copiously decorated with white flowers delicately arranged. The corpse was unwillingly shown, — only a few PROF. AGASSIZ moments to this company of his friends. But it was noble and serene in its aspect, — nothing amiss, — a calm and powerful head. A large company JUDGE E.R. HOAR filled the church and the grounds of the cemetery. All was so bright and J.S. DWIGHT quiet that pain or mourning was hardly suggested, and Holmes said to me C.K. WHIPPLE that it looked like a happy meeting. C.E. NORTON Clarke in the church said that Hawthorne had done more justice than any other to the shades of life, shown a sympathy with the crime in our BRONSON ALCOTT nature, and, like Jesus, was the friend of sinners. HILLARD I thought there was a tragic element in the event, that might be more JAMES T. FIELDS fully rendered, — in the painful solitude of the man, which, I suppose, JUDGE THOMAS could not longer be endured, and he died of it. I have found in his death a surprise and a disappointment. I thought him a greater man than any of his works betray, that there was still a great deal of work in him, and that he might one day show a purer power. Moreover, I have felt sure of him in his neighbourhood, and in his necessities of sympathy and intelligence, — that I could well wait his time, — his unwillingness and caprice, — and might one day conquer a friendship. It would have been a happiness, doubtless to both of us, to have come into habits of unreserved intercourse. It was easy to talk with him, — there were no barriers, — only, he said so little, that I talked too much, and stopped only because, as he gave no indications, I feared to exceed. He showed no egotism or self-assertion, rather a humility, and, at one time, a fear that he had written himself out. One day, when I found him on top of his hill, in the woods, he paced back the path to his house, and said, “This path is the only remembrance of me that will remain.” Now it appears that I waited too long. Lately he had removed himself the more by the indignation his perverse politics and unfortunate friendship for that paltry Franklin Pierce awakened, though it rather moved pity for Hawthorne, and the assured belief that he would outlive FRANKLIN PIERCE it, and come right at last. HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

“The Wayside” would be occupied by the widowed Mrs. Sophia Peabody Hawthorne, with her daughters Una Hawthorne and Rose Hawthorne and her son Julian Hawthorne, until, while again living in Europe, in October 1868 they would vend the place to George and Abby Gray. OLD HOUSES HAWTHORNE MAY 23, 1864 How beautiful it was, that one bright day In the long week of rain! Though all its splendor could not chase away The omnipresent pain. The lovely town was white with apple-blooms, And the great elms o’erhead Dark shadows wove on their aerial looms Shot through with golden thread. Across the meadows, by the gray old manse, The historic river flowed: I was as one who wanders in a trance, Unconscious of his road. The faces of familiar friends seemed strange; Their voices I could hear, And yet the words they uttered seemed to change Their meaning to my ear. For the one face I looked for was not there, The one low voice was mute; Only an unseen presence filled the air, And baffled my pursuit. Now I look back, and meadow, manse, and stream Dimly my thought defines; I only see — a dream within a dream — The hill-top hearsed with pines. I only hear above his place of rest Their tender undertone, The infinite longings of a troubled breast, The voice so like his own. There in seclusion and remote from men The wizard hand lies cold, Which at its topmost speed let fall the pen, And left the tale half told. Ah! who shall lift that wand of magic power, And the lost clew regain? The unfinished window in Aladdin’s tower Unfinished must remain!

May 26, Thursday: From this day into June 1st, there would be fighting at Dallas, Georgia / Pumpkinvine Creek, in which the 88th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment would be participating. US CIVIL WAR

May 27, Friday: There was fighting at Pickett’s Mills / New Hope Church, Georgia in which the 88th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment participated. US CIVIL WAR

Joshua Reed Giddings died in Montréal, Québec. (He is buried at the Oakdale Cemetery in Jefferson, Ohio.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

June 10, Friday: The 88th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment began to participate in operations about Marietta and against Kenesaw Mountain, Georgia. There was fighting at Brices Cross Roads / Tishomingo Creek. US CIVIL WAR

The Boston Recorder presented an excerpt from THE MAINE WOODS by Henry D. Thoreau. TIMELINE OF THE MAINE WOODS

Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson and his mother Margaret Isabella Balfour Stevenson returned from Edinburgh at the Colinton Farm of the Ramsay Traquair family.

June 11, Saturday: Richard Georg Strauss was born at 6AM in München, 1st of 2 children of Franz Joseph Strauss, principal horn player of the München Court Orchestra with his 2d wife, Josephine Pschorr, daughter of a brewer (the birth took place in an apartment in the back of the Pschorr brewery).

The 88th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment was participating in the fighting at Pine Mountain, Georgia.

Fighting began at Trevilian Station, and at Cynthiana / Kellar’s Bridge. US CIVIL WAR HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

June 15, Wednesday: The federal Congress passed a bill authorizing equal pay, equipment, arms, and health care for African-Americans serving in the armies of the Union. US CIVIL WAR

The 88th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment participated in the fighting at Lost Mountain, Georgia (until the 17th). A 3-day assault began on Petersburg, Virginia.

A XIIIth Amendment to the United States Constitution, abolishing slavery, had on April 8th been passed by the federal Senate. On this day the amendment failed, however, to obtain the 2/3ds vote required to pass in the federal House of Representatives (it would not be passed by the House until on the afternoon of January 31, 1865, a vote would be obtained of 119 over 56, with two votes to spare, 8 Representatives not voting.) “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States . . .”

June 27, Monday: Confederate President Jefferson Davis and Varina Davis’s daughter Varina Anne “Winnie” Davis was born.

Confederate defenders of Atlanta, Georgia defeated attacking Federal forces at Kenesaw Mountain to the city’s northwest, producing 2,500 casualties (the 88th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment participated in the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain). US CIVIL WAR

July 1, Friday: Richard Realf of the 88th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment wrote to Laura B. Merritt, “The Front” (photography, soldier’s philosophy).

Our national birthday, Monday the 4th of July: It was the birthday of a nation dedicated to equality of opportunity for all. The Reverend Stephen Fenn of Cornwall, Connecticut wrote his brother, bitterly, about his not being allowed to participate in the American Dream: They raise the price of wages for every Irishman & Nigger & yet, I am on the smallest salary of all surrounding ones.... HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

Governor Andrew Johnson of Tennessee addressed the citizenry at Nashville.

In Washington DC, Secretary William Seward, riding in a carriage, narrowly avoided serious injury when a rocket, set off by a young boy, struck him above the eye. CELEBRATING OUR B-DAY

The 88th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment engaged at Ruff’s Station and at Smyrna Camp Ground. Richard Realf of the 88th posted a letter to Laura B. Merritt and Marian M. Cramer from Marietta, Georgia (marching, pursuing the rebels). US CIVIL WAR

July 6, Wednesday: Richard Realf of the 88th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment wrote to Laura B. Merritt and Marian M. Cramer, on the Chattahoochee River, Georgia (Atlanta, hanged soldier).

Confederate terrorists occupied Hagerstown, Maryland and demanded $20,000 of the citizens. US CIVIL WAR

July 14, Thursday: Richard Realf of the 88th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment wrote to Laura B. Merritt, South bank, Chattahoochee River, Georgia (guerrillas, weather, Atlanta).

Within this week Captain Winthrop E. Faulkner mustered at Readville with Company E of the 6th Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteers for the One Hundred Days Campaign.19 On this day and the following one there was fighting at Tupelo / Harrisburg. Confederate troops withdrew across the Potomac. US CIVIL WAR

Russia annexed its protectorate of Abkhazia.

From this point until August 3d, US naval forces would be protecting the United States Minister to Japan during a visit to Yedo to negotiate concerning some American claims, and to ease these negotiations by a demonstration of American power. US MILITARY INTERVENTIONS

19. His unit would leave Massachusetts heading for Washington DC on July 20th, and would arrive there on July 22d. It would be assigned to garrison duty at Fort C.F. Smith on Arlington Heights until August 21st. Then it would relocate to Fort Delaware on Pea Patch Island, relieving the 157th Ohio Infantry from guard duty. It would guard the Rebel prisoners on Pea Patch Island until October 19th and then relocate to Boston, where it would be mustered out as of October 27th. In the course of this 100 days of military service there would be no deaths due to fighting but 10 of the enlisted men would succumb to illnesses. US CIVIL WAR HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

July 5, Tuesday: The 88th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment engaged at the Chattahoochie River (until the 17th).

Confederate terrorists crossed the Potomac into Maryland causing widespread panic. US CIVIL WAR

July 18, Monday: The 88th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment engaged at Buckhead and at Nancy’s Creek, Georgia.

President Abraham Lincoln issued a call for 500,000 volunteers for military service. US CIVIL WAR

July 20, Wednesday: There was fighting at Rutherford’s Farm.

Confederates assaulted the 88th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment and other Union troops at Peachtree Creek, Georgia and were repulsed with 6,575 casualties. US CIVIL WAR

The Springfield, Massachusetts Daily Union offered a review of Henry Thoreau’s THE MAINE WOODS. TIMELINE OF THE MAINE WOODS

William Fairfield Whiting was born in Holyoke, Massachusetts, a son of William Whiting. In 1924 he would be a delegate to the Republican National Convention from Massachusetts. In 1928/1929 he would be the U.S. Secretary of Commerce. He would die on August 31, 1936 and the body would be interred somewhere in Holyoke, Massachusetts. HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

July 21, Thursday: The Berkshire County Eagle presented “Night and Morning on Greylock,” an excerpt from Henry Thoreau’s A WEEK ON THE CONCORD AND MERRIMACK RIVERS.

In the Maine Farmer, an article titled “An Island Paradise,” excerpted from the New-York magazine Round Table in order to characterize Charles Waterton (June 3, 1782-May 27, 1865) as the “English Thoreau.” (Waterton, one of England’s landed Roman Catholic gentry, to protect the environment erected a 9-foot wall around his estate.)

Richard Realf of the 88th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment wrote to Laura B. Merritt and Marian M. Cramer from Atlanta, Georgia (battle, dead and wounded, Atlanta). US CIVIL WAR HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

July 22, Friday: Armin Count Zichy de Zich et Vásonkeö replaced Antal Count Forgách de Ghymes et Gács as Chancellor of Hungary.

The 88th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment participated in the siege of Atlanta, Georgia (until August 25th). US CIVIL WAR

July 23, Saturday: Richard Realf of the 88th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment wrote to Laura B. Merritt and Marian M. Cramer from Atlanta, Georgia (battle, Mcpherson, shelling, Atlanta, Mackay’s literary career). US CIVIL WAR

July 28, Thursday-29, Friday: There was fighting at Killdeer Mountain / Tahkahokuty Mountain. US CIVIL WAR

Richard Realf of the 88th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment wrote to Laura B. Merritt from “In front of Atlanta,” Georgia (Atlanta, thoughts on death). HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

August 25, Thursday: When Franz Liszt and his daughter Francesca Gaetana Cosima Liszt von Bülow arrived at Villa Pellet on Lake Starnberg, Richard Wagner was attending King Ludwig II of Bavaria’s birthday party at Hohenschwangau (he would return that evening).

The 88th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment began a flank movement on Jonesboro. People were killing each other at Ream’s Station. Elsewhere in the nation, there wasn’t much of this mutual murder going on, except that beginning on this day and continuing into the 29th, people would be killing each other at Smithfield Crossing. President Abraham Lincoln summoned Frederick Douglass to the White House to advise on problems of Lincoln’s re-election campaign. (Reversing his earlier stance, he would endorse Lincoln.) US CIVIL WAR

August 31, Wednesday: The Reverend Francis Ellingwood Abbot was ordained minister of the Unitarian society in Dover, New Hampshire.

President Abraham Lincoln made a speech to the 148th Ohio Regiment.

The 88th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment participated in fighting that began at Jonesborough, Georgia, that would continue into September 1st. US CIVIL WAR

September 2, Friday: The 88th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment engaged at LoveJoy Station (until the 6th).

General Sherman’s Federal forces captured Atlanta, Georgia (later President Abraham Lincoln, with advice from General Ulysses S. Grant, would approve General Sherman’s march to the sea). US CIVIL WAR HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

September 5, Monday: Warships of the United States, Great Britain, France, and the Netherlands began to attack the Japanese in the Shimoneski Straits in reprisal for the closing of ports and expelling of foreigners by Japan in an attempt to compel Japan, and the Prince of Nagato in particular, to permit the Straits to be used by foreign shipping in accordance with existing treaties. This operation would continue until September 14th. US MILITARY INTERVENTIONS

Sergeant Richard Realf of the 88th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment wrote to Laura B. Merritt and Marian M. Cramer from Atlanta, Georgia (Atlanta, strategy, Sherman, stress of battle, McClellan’s bid for the presidency). US CIVIL WAR HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

September 17, Saturday: The Chicago Public Library has among its American Civil War Documents, Part 1, Series 18, #72.1019 a letter written in Atlanta, Georgia by Richard Realf to General William D. Whipple. It is a letter of application to become an officer overseeing a black regiment, and to it are attached endorsements of such an appointment by 4 commanding officers. US CIVIL WAR

Walter Savage Landor died at the age of 89. Rather than transporting the body to Widcombe near Bath as he had desired, it would be deposited in the Protestant Cemetery in Florence near the tomb of his pen-pal Elizabeth Barrett Browning. The stone was supposed to read “Sacred / to the Memory of / Walter Savage Landor / born 30th day of January 1775 / died on the 17th of September 1864. / This last sad tribute / of his wife and children.” However, the Italian stonecutter, unfamiliar with the English alphabet, carved “of his coife and children” (this wouldn’t matter, for the stone was not a strong one and in a few years the inscription had eroded; this stone has in 1945 been covered with a magnificent memorial slab). A statue of his wife Julia Thuillier Savage Landor, by the Sicilian sculptor Michele Auteri Pomar, is also to be noticed; it is above the HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

tomb of their son Arnold Savage Landor: HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

September 18, Friday-20, Sunday: There was fighting at Chickamauga, Georgia. The result of the struggle was that Chattanooga, Tennessee would remain under Confederate siege.

Just prior to this battle Brigadier General William Haines Lytle, Commander of the brigade in which Orderly Sergeant Richard Realf was serving, made a speech to his troops that so moved the poet, that he wrote some lines and presented them to his General, who was himself the author of a poem “Anthony to Cleopatra” (on the morning of the 20th as the general led his troops into the battle, a fatal bullet from a Whitworth .45-caliber percussion rifle passed through this poem in the General’s vest pocket before penetrating his body).20

During this Union defeat Sergeant Realf distinguished himself by his personal bravery. Whether his poetry exhibits bravery or instead bravado is an issue I will, close reader, leave to your discernment: “Vatës.” “Vatës,” I shouted, while your solemn words Rythmic with crowded passion, lilted past; “That Land which, thrilled with anguish, still affords Great souls all coined in one grand battle blast, Like this soul and this singing, shall not fail So much as by a hair’s-breadth, of the large Results of affluent wisdom, whereunto Across the bloody gaps our blades must hold, And far beyond the mountain and the maze We pass with bruised limbs that yet shall scale The topmost heights of Being! Therefore, thou Lead on, that we may follow, for I think The Future hath not wherefrom we should shrink, Held by the steadfast shining of your brow!” US CIVIL WAR

20. The horse on which the general had been riding ran into the Confederate lines, and General Bragg gave this horse to Hillary Garrison Waldrep of Company B of the 16th Alabama Regiment of Infantry — so it must have been this man who was recognized as having fired the fatal shot. HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

September 29, Thursday: The 88th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment would be conducting operations against General Hood in North Georgia and North Alabama (until November 3d).

On this day and the following day there would be fighting near New Market Heights, Virginia.

The 38th United States Colored Infantry was part of a division of black troops sent into the attack in what would come to be known as the Battle of Chaffin’s Farm. The central Confederate defenses they were sent against consisted of 2 lines of abatis and a line of palisades defended by the Texas Brigade under Brigadier General John Gregg, and in the approach they were stalled at the abatis having taken more than 50% casualties. When a renewed attack was ordered Sergeant James Henry Harris and 2 others of the 38th, Private William H. Barnes and 1st Sergeant Edward Ratcliff, led the assault and made themselves the 1st to breach the defenses, engaging Confederates in hand-to-hand combat. When they were joined by the remainder of their division, the enemy was driven back. US CIVIL WAR HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

September 29, Thursday: The 88th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment would be conducting operations against General Hood in North Georgia and North Alabama (until November 3d).

On this day and the following day there would be fighting near New Market Heights, Virginia.

The 38th United States Colored Infantry was part of a division of black troops sent into the attack in what would come to be known as the Battle of Chaffin’s Farm. The central Confederate defenses they were sent against consisted of 2 lines of abatis and a line of palisades defended by the Texas Brigade under Brigadier General John Gregg, and in the approach they were stalled at the abatis having taken more than 50% casualties. When a renewed attack was ordered Sergeant James Henry Harris and 2 others of the 38th, Private William H. Barnes and 1st Sergeant Edward Ratcliff, led the assault and made themselves the 1st to breach the defenses, engaging Confederates in hand-to-hand combat. When they were joined by the remainder of their division, the enemy was driven back. US CIVIL WAR

October 6, Thursday: Richard Realf of the 88th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment wrote to Laura B. Merritt, no location (women, early life, furlough, bravery and death of rebel soldier).

After his tour of South Carolina and Georgia, Confederate President Jefferson Davis returned to Richmond, Virginia. US CIVIL WAR HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

October 12, Wednesday: Mary Ann Day Brown buried what she was being led to suppose was the body of her son Watson Brown in the Adirondacks and then set out be the guest of Franklin Benjamin Sanborn and Sarah E. Sanborn for a week in Concord. After several days of receptions in Boston, knowing that Salmon Brown planned to take his family and join a train of 40 wagons, she and her younger daughters would board ship with an ample retirement fund made up of solicited donations, to spend her remaining years with her daughter Mrs. Ellen Fablinger at various locations on the West Coast.21

Richard Realf of the 88th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment wrote to Laura B. Merritt and Marian M. Cramer from Chattanooga, Tennessee (injury, railroad accident, hospital). US CIVIL WAR

November: Kit Carson was sent by General Carleton to deal with the natives of western Texas. Near the ruins known as Adobe Walls his expedition ran up against a combined force of Kiowa, Comanche, and Cheyenne numbering more than 1,500 warriors. This native coalition led by headman Dohäsan attempted several charges in the face of two mountain howitzers, and sustaining heavy losses. Carson then burned the native lodges, destroyed anything capable of sustaining life, and returned to Fort Bascom.

During this month and the following one, the 88th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment would be taking part in the Nashville Campaign. US CIVIL WAR

November 13, Sunday: The Chicago Public Library has among its American Civil War Documents, Part 1, Series 18, #72.1012 a letter written by Richard Realf from Pulaski, Tennessee. US CIVIL WAR

21. Eventually she would have 4 children and 17 grandchildren living in various parts of California and Oregon. HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

November 20, Sunday: Mass no.1 in d for solo voices, chorus, orchestra and organ was performed for the initial time, in Linz Cathedral, and directed by its composer Anton Bruckner.

Hans von Bülow arrived with his wife and children in München and took up residence not far from Richard Wagner’s Villa Pellet on the lake. Von Bülow has been appointed “Vorspieler des Königs” at Wagner’s suggestion, although this was a ruse intended to bring Frau von Bülow close enough to be convenient.

Richard Realf of the 88th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment wrote from Pulaski, Tennessee to Laura B. Merritt (illness, living quarters, rats, rebels, Lincoln). US CIVIL WAR

November 22, Tuesday: Federal troops occupied Milledgeville, the temporary state capital of Georgia. Just before they arrived the state legislature issued a call for troops and then ran away.

Richard Realf wrote to Laura B. Merritt, Chattanooga, Tennessee (depression, books and magazines, definition of poet, depletion of regiment, beauty).

There was fighting at Griswoldville. US CIVIL WAR

John Mitchel sent a note to the home of a Mr. Foote, challenging him to a duel, by way of a Mr. Swan serving as messenger, but when the recipient refused to receive the note Mr. Swan assaulted him, and had to be beaten off by Mrs. Foote.

November 24, Thursday-27, Sunday: The 88th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment fought at Columbia, Duck River. US CIVIL WAR HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

November 29, Tuesday: The 88th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment fought at Spring Hill. US CIVIL WAR

A new type of telegraph-line insulator was patented:

November 30, Wednesday: A Confederate assault south of Franklin, Tennessee was repulsed but, during the night, the Federal forces, including the 88th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment, retreated toward Nashville. This action produced 8,578 casualties. After the battle Richard Realf received the public thanks of General David Sloane Stanley, the corps commander, for his having had the forethought to secure reserve cartridges without which some of the federal soldiers would have by running out of ammo become entirely ineffective.

There was fighting at Honey Hill, South Carolina. Leaving Hilton Head on November 28th, a Union expeditionary force under Major General John P. Hatch steamed up the Broad River in transports to cut the Charleston & Savannah Railroad near Pocotaligo. Hatch disembarked at Boyd’s Landing and marched inland. On this day Hatch encountered a Confederate force of regulars and militia under Colonel Charles J. Colcock at Honey Hill. Determined attacks by US Colored Troops (including the 54th Massachusetts) failed to capture the Confederate entrenchments or cut the railroad. Hatch retired after dark, withdrawing to his transports at Boyd’s Neck. US CIVIL WAR

December 14, Wednesday: Richard Realf wrote to Laura B. Merritt from a camp near Nashville, Tennessee (Franklin, blockade, troop sentiment, life after war, marching). US CIVIL WAR

December 15, Thursday: Federal troops, including the 88th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment, drove back Confederate troops around Nashville, Tennessee. US CIVIL WAR

A bankrupt who out of his personal experience had become a flaming advocate of Representative Thomas Allen Jenckes’s federal uniform bankruptcy act wrote to him that President Abraham Lincoln’s Republican Party was going to lose at the polls “if this administration refuse to grant us that which they do not refuse to the meanest negro.”

Racist comparisons defined failure and rebuked the government HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

for letting white men fall so low.

December 16, Friday: Continuing his policy of taking the offensive at any cost, General John B. Hood had brought his reduced army of Confederates before the defenses of Nashville, Tennessee. There, in the most complete victory for Union forces in the entire war, after some 9,000 casualties, they were repulsed by the forces led by General George H. Thomas (which included the 88th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment) and began a AURORA headlong flight toward Franklin. US CIVIL WAR

December 17, Saturday: La belle Hélène, an opéra-bouffe by Jacques Offenbach to words of Meilhac and Halevy, was performed for the initial time, at the Variétés, Paris. The public was lukewarm. Critics didn’t like the irreverence but eventually this would succeed.

On this day and the following one there was fighting at Marion.

The 88th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment began a pursuit of the fleeing remnants of the forces of General John B. Hood, to the Tennessee River (this would continue until the 28th). US CIVIL WAR HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

1865

January 7, Saturday: The 88th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment had moved to a camp near Huntsville, Alabama, where they would be stationed until March. On this day Richard Realf wrote to Laura B. Merritt from there (Franklin, blockade, troop sentiment, life after war, marching). US CIVIL WAR

January 20, Friday: Richard Realf wrote to Laura B. Merritt and Marian M. Cramer, Huntsville, Alabama (staff position). US CIVIL WAR HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

February 28, Tuesday: Richard Realf wrote to Laura B. Merritt and Marian M. Cramer, Nashville, Tennessee (depression and anxiety, aide-de-camp, health, news of victory, hopes for peace).

A report from Walt Whitman: “Specimen Days”

As I pass’d the military headquarters of the city, not far from the President’s house, I stopt to interview some of the crowd of escapees who were lounging there. In appearance they were the same as previously mention’d. Two of them, one about 17, and the other perhaps 25 or ’6, I talk’d with some time. They were from North Carolina, born and rais’d there, and had folks there. The elder had been in the rebel service four years. He was first conscripted for two years. He was then kept arbitrarily in the ranks. This is the case with a large proportion of the secession army. There was nothing downcast in these young men’s manners; the younger had been soldiering about a year; he was conscripted; there were six brothers (all the boys of the family) in the army, part of them as conscripts, part as volunteers; three had been kill’d; one had escaped about four months ago, and now this one had got away; he was a pleasant and well-talking lad, with the peculiar North Carolina idiom (not at all disagreeable to my ears.) He and the elder one were of the same company, and escaped together — and wish’d to remain together. They thought of getting transportation away to Missouri, and working there; but were not sure it was judicious. I advised them rather to go to some of the directly northern States, and [Page 757] get farm work for the present. The younger had made six dollars on the boat, with some tobacco he brought; he had three and a half left. The elder had nothing; I gave him a trifle. Soon after, met John Wormley, 9th Alabama, a West Tennessee rais’d boy, parents both dead — had the look of one for a long time on short allowance — said very little — chew’d tobacco at a fearful rate, spitting in proportion — large clear dark-brown eyes, very fine — didn’t know what to make of me — told me at last he wanted much to get some clean underclothes, and a pair of decent pants. Didn’t care about coat or hat fixings. Wanted a chance to wash himself well, and put on the underclothes. I had the very great pleasure of helping him to accomplish all those wholesome designs.

US CIVIL WAR

March 15, Wednesday: The 88th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment went on an expedition to Bull’s Gap and conducted operations in East Tennessee (until April 22d). US CIVIL WAR HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

April 23, Sunday: The 88th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment moved to Nashville, Tennessee, where they would be stationed until June 1865.

Aboard the Constitution still a couple of days out from the port of San Francisco, Louis Moreau Gottschalk and his party received the news simultaneously that General Robert E. Lee has surrendered and President Abraham Lincoln has been assassinated. US CIVIL WAR

June 9, Friday: Charles Dickens was returning with Ellen Ternan by train from a holiday in Paris. He later wrote a friend about what happened: I was in the only carriage which did not go over into the stream. Our carriage was caught upon the turn of some of the ruin of the bridge and hung suspended and balanced in an apparently impossible manner. I got out with great caution and stood upon the step. Looking down I saw the bridge had gone, and nothing below me but the line of rail. Some people in the two other compartments were madly trying to plunge out of the window, and had no idea that there was an open swampy field fifteen feet below them and nothing else. Suddenly I came upon a staggering man covered with blood (I think he must have been flung clean out of his carriage), with such a frightful cut across his skull that I couldn’t bear to look at him. I poured some water over his face and gave him some brandy, and laid him down on the grass, and he said, “I am gone,” and died afterwards. TIMELINE OF ACCIDENTS HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

The 88th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment was mustered out (its soldiers would be discharged in Chicago on June 22d).

On this day and the following one, a report from Walt Whitman:22 “Specimen Days”

I have been sitting late to-night by the bedside of a wounded captain, a special friend of mine, lying with a painful fracture of left leg in one of the hospitals, in a large ward partially vacant. The lights were put out, all but a little candle, far from where I sat. The full moon shone in through the windows, making long, slanting silvery patches on the floor. All was still, my friend too was silent, but could not sleep; so I sat there by him, slowly wafting the fan, and occupied with the musings that arose out of the scene, the long shadowy ward, the beautiful ghostly moonlight on the floor, the white beds, here and there an occupant with huddled form, the bed-clothes thrown off. The hospitals have a number of cases of sun-stroke and exhaustion by heat, from the late reviews. There are many such from the Sixth corps, from the hot parade of day before yesterday. (Some of these shows cost the lives of scores of men.)

US CIVIL WAR

June 10, Saturday: Lydia Howard Huntley Sigourney died in Hartford, Connecticut. She had been one of the most popular writers of her day, both in America and in England, and was being referred to as “the American Hemans.” During her life she had contributed more than 2,000 articles to nearly 300 different periodicals, and written more than 50 books.

While still a soldier, Richard Realf got married with Sophia Emily Graves at the Congregational Church in Michigan City, Indiana, and would leave her at her home in an Indiana village, Furnissville, when he needed to follow his regiment. He wrote to her from camp frequently and with affection. However, he would form a plan to join the Oneida Community of John Humphrey Noyes and by the close of the war would be involved with a belle of Washington DC society. US CIVIL WAR

The premiere of Richard Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde was staged for the initial time, in the Königliches Hof- und Nationaltheater of München, directed by Hans von Bülow. Despite some hissing, it was considered a success. In the audience was the Wagner devotee Anton Bruckner. LISTEN TO IT NOW

22. Actually the moon had been full on the night of the 7th. HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

June 22, Thursday: The final shot of the US Civil War was fired, by the CSS Shenandoah in the Bering Sea. WINDING IT DOWN

In Chicago, the soldiers of the 88th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment were discharged. Five of its officers and 98 of its enlisted men had in the course of 3 years of Civil War actions been killed or had died of wounds, and 4 officers and 84 enlisted men had succumbed to disease. Colonel Francis Trowbridge Sherman mustered out with his regiment. Richard Realf transfered to the 50th Colored Infantry Regiment of the Union Army, where he would serve as an officer until after 6 months the unit would be disbanded.

At the end of the war George DeBaptiste would return to Detroit, Michigan, sell his steamship T. Whitney, and establish a restaurant and ice cream parlor on Fort Street near Woodward Avenue. When this proved a losing venture, he would open a restaurant opposite the market on Michigan Grand Avenue.

July 2, Saturday: Two poems by Richard Realf bear this date: “L.M.” [crossed out in purple ink], and “My Questions.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

1865

June 10, Saturday: Lydia Howard Huntley Sigourney died in Hartford, Connecticut. She had been one of the most popular writers of her day, both in America and in England, and was being referred to as “the American Hemans.” During her life she had contributed more than 2,000 articles to nearly 300 different periodicals, and written more than 50 books.

While still a soldier, Richard Realf got married with Sophia Emily Graves at the Congregational Church in Michigan City, Indiana, and would leave her at her home in an Indiana village, Furnissville, when he needed to follow his regiment. He wrote to her from camp frequently and with affection. However, he would form a plan to join the Oneida Community of John Humphrey Noyes and by the close of the war would be involved with a belle of Washington DC society. US CIVIL WAR

The premiere of Richard Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde was staged for the initial time, in the Königliches Hof- und Nationaltheater of München, directed by Hans von Bülow. Despite some hissing, it was considered a success. In the audience was the Wagner devotee Anton Bruckner. LISTEN TO IT NOW HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

1866

March: The Rhode Island legislature confirmed the de facto racial desegregation of the state’s public school system by abandonment of its black schools. George Thomas Downing had one heck of a lot to do with this. Black Rhode Islanders of property were granted the privilege of the ballot.

During this month and the following one, former Confederate President Jefferson Davis’s wife Varina Davis and family would be in Canada, along with Varina’s mother, Margaret K. Howell (who would be tending to the children when Varina returned to Virginia to visit her imprisoned husband).

A poem by Richard Realf appeared in The Atlantic Monthly: An Old Man’s Idyl By the waters of Life we sat together, Hand in hand in the golden days Of the beautiful early summer weather, When skies were purple and breath was praise, When the heart kept tune to the carol of birds, And the birds kept tune to the songs which ran Through shimmer of flowers on grassy swards, And trees with voices Æolian.

By the rivers of Life we walked together, I and my darling, unafraid; And lighter than any linnet’s feather The burdens of Being on us weighed. And Love’s sweet miracles o’er us threw Mantles of joy outlasting Time, And up from the rosy morrows grew A sound that seemed like a marriage chime.

In the gardens of Life we strayed together; And the luscious apples were ripe and red, And the languid lilac and honeyed heather Swooned with the fragrance which they shed. And under the trees the angels walked, And up in the air a sense of wings Awed us tenderly while we talked Softly in sacred communings.

In the meadows of Life we strayed together, Watching the waving harvests grow; And under the benison of the Father Our hearts, like the lambs, skipped to and fro. And the cowslips, hearing our low replies, Broidered fairer the emerald banks, And glad tears shone in the daisies’ eyes, And the timid violet glistened thanks.

Who was with us, and what was round us, Neither myself nor my darling guessed; Only we knew that something crowned us Out from the heavens with crowns of rest; Only we knew that something bright Lingered lovingly where we stood, HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

Clothed with the incandescent light Of something higher than humanhood.

O the riches Love doth inherit! Ah, the alchemy which doth change Dross of body and dregs of spirit Into sanctities rare and strange! My flesh is feeble and dry and old, My darling’s beautiful hair is gray; But our elixir and precious gold Laugh at the footsteps of decay.

Harms of the world have come unto us, Cups of sorrow we yet shall drain; But we have a secret which doth show us Wonderful rainbows in the rain. And we hear the tread of the years move by, And the sun is setting behind the hills; But my darling does not fear to die, And I am happy in what God wills.

So we sit by our household fires together, Dreaming the dreams of long ago: Then it was balmy summer weather, And now the valleys are laid in snow. Icicles hang from the slippery eaves; The wind blows cold,—’tis growing late; Well, well! we have garnered all our sheaves, I and my darling, and we wait.

March 20, Tuesday: Rikard Nordraak, who along with Edvard Grieg provided the vanguard of Norwegian composition, died in Berlin.

After a series of concerts in Lima, Louis Moreau Gottschalk boarded ship for Arica, Chile, where he would give several performances in northern Chile and southern Peru.

Richard Realf was mustered out of the 50th Colored Infantry Regiment of the Union Army at Vicksburg, Mississippi with the rank of Captain and Brevet Lieutenant-Colonel and, instead of returning to his wife Sophie Emery Graves Realf in Furnissville, Indiana, went to Washington DC to pursue the belle of Washington DC whom he had briefly met (as would be revealed, she had not been as impressed with him as he with her). He would then involve himself in a “prolonged debauch” that involved a bigamous marriage to an opportunistic victimizer, Catherine Cassidy Realf, whom he then struggled to abandon. Then one day he would appear in the New-York office of Oneida and Noyes would invite him to make a temporary visit to the community in upstate New York, but he would never make an appearance. US CIVIL WAR HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

July 2, Monday: Alfred Russel Wallace complained to Charles Darwin about his unfortunate choice of terminology. “Natural selection” simply was not doing the trick. The common reader was misunderstanding this to mean that a pagan deity, Nature, was doing the selecting. Wouldn’t Darwin please switch to the use of the self- explanatory and non-confusing terminology so ably sponsored by Herbert Spencer, “survival of the fittest”? (Fortunately, Darwin would resist this suggestion.)

Richard Realf wrote from French’s Hotel in New-York to “President Perfectionist Association” in Oneida, New York (the letter would be delivered to Theodore L. Pitt, Secretary of the Oneida Community), describing himself and inquiring as to “associating myself with your own or some other communistic society.”

July 24, Tuesday: Richard Realf wrote from New-York to Theodore L. Pitt, Secretary of the Oneida Community, relating that having met with John Humphrey Noyes in the New-York office of the community, he was intending to proceed with a visit. If it did turn out that “your life is the most Christ-like that is being lived,” then he might well seek to remain. Briefly, during all my life, I have, as it were, been haunted with a voice as of heaven, compelling me upon the altars of sacrifice and renunciation. Often and often I have tried to stifle it; often and often I have violated its commands — tried to smother it, denied its validity, blasphemed its sanctity; but never could I escape it for all that. And because out in the world where people don’t see God, for that He is out of physical sight, I can not live after the awful ideals which I can not escape; because out in the world the howl of the beast so often drowns out the song of the seraph within me; because the cares of it and the bitternesses of it make and keep me unclean; because, while alien from God and not in at-one-ment I perish in my soul until I am so related; because holding it true ‘That men may rise on stepping stones Of their dead selves to higher things,’ I desire to die to all sin, and to become alive to righteousness, and because I am well assured that those whom the Eternal Spirit has awakened from low and material delights to a state of spiritual holiness and intuition, constitute, as it were, a divine atmosphere for the reinvigoration of needy souls, therefore I propose to visit your Community, in the belief that if God sees it best for me I shall gravitate toward you, and that if not I shall at least have been strengthened and comforted.

Tennessee was readmitted to the federal union of the United States of America. HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

THE MATTER, EXPLAINED

Unionist govt. appointed by Missouri Constitutional Convention 1861 Missouri

Elected Union & unelected rump CSA governments from 1861 Kentucky

July 24, 1866 Tennessee

June 22, 1868 Arkansas

June 25, 1868 Florida

July 4, 1868 North Carolina

July 9, 1868 South Carolina

July 9, 1868 Louisiana

July 13, 1868 Alabama

July 21, 1868; July 15, 1870 Georgia

January 26, 1870 Virginia

February 23, 1870 Mississippi

March 30, 1870 Texas

US CIVIL WAR HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

August 17, Friday: In Berlin, A peace agreement was signed between Prussia and Baden.

Harper & Brothers issued Herman Melville’s BATTLE-PIECES AND ASPECTS OF THE WAR. This book, dedicated to the 300,000 Union soldiers who had died during the violence, made no mention of the roughly equivalent number of Confederate soldiers who had died roughly equivalent deaths during the violence: The fight for the city is fought In Nature’s old domain; Man goes out to the wilds, And Orpheus’ charm is vain. In glades they meet skull after skull Where pine-cones lay — the rusted gun, Green shoes full of bones, the mouldering coat And cuddled-up skeleton....

He pointed out that humans did not seem wise enough to leave war to WALDEN’s “red and black ants.”

By this point the Oneida Community of upstate New York had been alerted that although the visit by Richard Realf had been delayed, this had been due to typhoid fever, and he was still intending to make that visit. HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

September: Upon completing his stint as President Lincoln’s U.S. District Attorney for Massachusetts (since April 1861), Richard Henry Dana, Jr. again vacationed abroad.

In New-York, Colonel Rufus Ingalls, Assistant Quartermaster-General of the US Army, was employing Richard Realf as a confidential clerk.

October: Rather than grant Hinton Rowan Helper the 50% raise in salary for which he had been pleading, he was allowed to resign his responsibilities as US consul.

When it became mandatory for Julian Hawthorne to discontinue his attendance at Harvard College, the Hawthornes relocated to Germany so their son would be able to continue in an education.

A letter arrived at the Oneida Community in Oneida, New York inquiring after Colonel Richard Realf. The letter was signed “S.E. Realf” and had been posted in Furnissville, Indiana.

In collaboration with the composer Charles Edward Horsley, then living in Melbourne, Australia, Richard Henry Horne staged THE SOUTH SEA SISTERS, A LYRIC MASQUE. This was produced as one of the highlights to the opening of the Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition. The performance was well received by audiences and critics, and a few nights later was repeated. HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

1867

Fall: The case of Thomas Pickett vs SouthWestern RR Company was appealed to the Georgia Supreme Court (36 GA Reports, pages 85-88). During Fall 1860, before the Civil War, Amanda, an enslaved “mulatto” cook of Sumter County, Georgia, had purchased a ticket to Macon on a SouthWestern train, and she had then remained absent from her owner for one year and one day. It having being illegal for a railroad to transport a slave without written permission of his or her owner, hirer, or overseer, it had been possible for slavemasters to sue the railroad corporation for damages if one of their slaves had managed to purchase such an unauthorized ticket and thus escaped from them. The person who had pursued and recovered Amanda testified before the court that “she was as white as himself, &c.; and that no one who did not know her and her status would have suspected that she was a slave.” The SouthWestern Railroad Company’s lawyer argued that “the color of the girl Amanda, being white, the defendant was justifiable in selling her a ticket, for the presumption was that she was a free woman.” In this case the court ruled that “However white in color, as it seems she was (though she had negro blood in her veins), we have no power to regard that fact as excusatory or altering the right of the owner to a recovery of damages. This is, in its peculiar character, a hard case on the Railroad Company; but such an one cannot, since the abolition of slavery, occur again.” It made no difference that a civil war had been fought and lost. It made no difference, all that hoopla about a XIIIth Amendment to the federal Constitution freeing the slaves. Plagiarizing the slaves? – Slaves amount to property and property amounts to entitlement. Railroad, you must reimburse that slavemaster who had once upon a time, while this world still stood on its own two feet, considered himself entitled to her white skin!

A series of poems in the Rochester, New York Union signed “R.R.” attracted some public attention. The poems included a poem “Remembering and Waiting” so like the “An Old Man’s Idyl,” that had appeared in The Atlantic Monthly for March 1866, as to arouse suspicion. Might this be plagiarism? Richard Realf stepped forward to acknowledge authorship of these “R.R.” poems — “Remembering and Waiting” was indeed an reworked version of “An Old Man’s Idyl” but it did not amount to plagiarism as it was his own poem. An Old Man’s Idyl By the waters of Life we sat together, Hand in hand in the golden days Of the beautiful early summer weather, When skies were purple and breath was praise, When the heart kept tune to the carol of birds, And the birds kept tune to the songs which ran Through shimmer of flowers on grassy swards, And trees with voices Æolian.

By the rivers of Life we walked together, I and my darling, unafraid; And lighter than any linnet’s feather The burdens of Being on us weighed. And Love’s sweet miracles o’er us threw Mantles of joy outlasting Time, And up from the rosy morrows grew A sound that seemed like a marriage chime.

In the gardens of Life we strayed together; And the luscious apples were ripe and red, And the languid lilac and honeyed heather Swooned with the fragrance which they shed. HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

And under the trees the angels walked, And up in the air a sense of wings Awed us tenderly while we talked Softly in sacred communings.

In the meadows of Life we strayed together, Watching the waving harvests grow; And under the benison of the Father Our hearts, like the lambs, skipped to and fro. And the cowslips, hearing our low replies, Broidered fairer the emerald banks, And glad tears shone in the daisies’ eyes, And the timid violet glistened thanks.

Who was with us, and what was round us, Neither myself nor my darling guessed; Only we knew that something crowned us Out from the heavens with crowns of rest; Only we knew that something bright Lingered lovingly where we stood, Clothed with the incandescent light Of something higher than humanhood.

O the riches Love doth inherit! Ah, the alchemy which doth change Dross of body and dregs of spirit Into sanctities rare and strange! My flesh is feeble and dry and old, My darling’s beautiful hair is gray; But our elixir and precious gold Laugh at the footsteps of decay.

Harms of the world have come unto us, Cups of sorrow we yet shall drain; But we have a secret which doth show us Wonderful rainbows in the rain. And we hear the tread of the years move by, And the sun is setting behind the hills; But my darling does not fear to die, And I am happy in what God wills.

So we sit by our household fires together, Dreaming the dreams of long ago: Then it was balmy summer weather, And now the valleys are laid in snow. Icicles hang from the slippery eaves; The wind blows cold,—’tis growing late; Well, well! we have garnered all our sheaves, I and my darling, and we wait.

October 26, Saturday: Richard Realf, possibly under the mistaken impression that his wife Sophie Emery Graves Realf in Furnissville, Indiana had died due to brain fever,23 involved himself in a bigamous marriage with Catherine Cassidy in a ceremony at the Church of the Trinity in Rochester, New Jersey (he would claim having been drunk at the time).

23. The matter is complicated, it seems, by Sophie Emery Graves Realf moving elsewhere while altering the spelling first of “Realf” and then of “Graves.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

1869

February 4, Thursday: Since Romeo and Juliet was playing in Manhattan, Richard Realf, who at the time was Post Librarian on Governor’s Island, New-York, seized his opportunity to use the facilities to deliver a lecture on “Shakespeare.”

February 9, Tuesday: The Las Villas district of Cuba rose up in arms under General Federico Cavada (during the Civil War, this man had been a colonel in the US Volunteer Service).

James Cassidy of New-York would file a charge against Richard Realf, of having on this day stolen from him $40.

February 13, Saturday: The New-York police took Richard Realf to the Tombs, where he appeared before Police Justice Hogan and asserted that although he had admittedly taken $40 from James Cassidy, this had been money due to him.

John Milton Cheney died.

JOHN MILTON CHENEY [of Concord], son of Hezekiah Cheney, was graduated [at Harvard College] in 1821. He settled as a lawyer in Concord, and was appointed Cashier of the Concord Bank in April, 1832.24

24. Lemuel Shattuck’s 1835 A HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF CONCORD;.... Boston: Russell, Odiorne, and Company; Concord MA: John Stacy (On or about November 11, 1837 Henry Thoreau indicated a familiarity with the contents of at least pages 2-3 and 6-9 of this historical study. On July 16, 1859 he would correct a date mistake buried in the body of the text.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

February 18, Thursday: John Boyle O’Reilly sneaked away from his inmate duties to link up with a party of Irish settlers from the town of Dardanup. They rode to the Collie River, where a rowboat was waiting, and rowed out the Leschenault Inlet, turning north along the ocean coast, traveled about a dozen miles, and concealed themselves among the dunes. They were to await the American whaling ship Vigilant, which Father Patrick McCabe had arranged would take him on board when it sailed from its Bunbury anchorage.

Ein deutsches Requiem for soprano, baritone, chorus, orchestra, and organ by Johannes Brahms to words from the German Bible of Martin Luther was performed completely for the initial time, in the Gewandhaus, Leipzig.

Richard Realf was discharged on his own recognizance by the New-York police and the theft case would never be brought to trial. It might be that this had been a marital quarrel, since James Cassidy was the father of Realf’s wife-by-bigamy Catherine Cassidy Realf. With his reputation tainted, the poet would soon leave the New-York office of General Ingalls, Assistant Quartermaster-General of the US Army, and head for South Carolina. There he would obtain a Colonel’s commission in a black regiment of freedmen (for 6 months until the unit was disbanded), and write for the Republican State newspaper. Following this he would teach until for a period at a freedmen’s school in Graniteville, South Carolina (when his wife-by-bigamy Catherine Cassidy Realf would show up, her violent “colorphobia” would obligate him to renounce this teaching, and he would seek to make money as a Republican orator).

DATE: Richard Realf was mustered out of the US Army at Fort Columbus, New York.

July 9, Friday: By this point Richard Realf had been appointed Assistant United States Assessor of Internal Revenue at Graniteville, South Carolina (a position obviously involving significant danger). HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

December: The US federal government formally conveyed the Lockwood House at Harpers Ferry and 3 other still- extant Armory residences on high-and-dry Camp Hill to the trustees of Storer Normal School. Frederick Douglass would serve as a trustee of Storer College and in 1881 would deliver a memorable oration there about John Brown.

When some small amount of money went missing in the Graniteville, South Carolina tax office, but apparently not taken by Richard Realf, that sum was made good by friends but the poet considered it necessary to move on. He separated from his bigamous wife Catherine Cassidy Realf and moved first to Augusta, Georgia, and then farther north. When Catherine Cassidy Realf followed him to Indianapolis, Indiana, he left town, winding up destitute in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Soon, there, he would establish himself as one of Francis Murphy’s temperance lecturers and become an editor and writer for the Commercial (until 1876), lecturing and writing poetry. He entered into a common-law relationship with Miss Eliza Ann “Lizzie” Whapham, who would bear a son Richard and triplet daughters Mabel, Minnie, and Alice. Then Catherine Cassidy Realf would follow him to Pittsburgh, and this time she would appear with an infant in her arms (it would seem that she had obtained this infant from an orphan asylum, as it was difficult to calculate how he might have fathered it and she carried it to term). Nevertheless, she filed a complaint for support and the poet was taken to the local jail, from which only the intercession of the Reverend David Schindler and other friends secured his release and his return to his temperance lecturing. He would write for The Christian Radical while declining to return to married life. The child that had been produced and alleged to be his would soon die. HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

1871

Richard Realf’s sister Sarah Realf Whapham and her husband John Whapham and their children (a number of the total of 9 boys and 6 girls had already been born since their marriage in 1861) came over from England to farm at Bulger, Pennsylvania. One of John Whapham’s sisters, Miss Eliza Ann “Lizzie” Whapham, who came over with them, entered into a common-law marriage with Richard Realf. She would bear him first a son Richard Realf, and then the triplet daughters Mabel, Minnie, and Alice.

Dr. Jacob Mendes DaCosta, a New-York physician, reported that a troubling number of Civil War veterans were suffering from panic disorders (he described the symptoms of this under the rubric “irritable heart”). US CIVIL WAR HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

1872

Work ceased at Fort Niagara with only the land front completed. Even then the new gun positions were not armed, and the walls had become obsolescent by the time of their completion. The fact that work was carried even to this point was probably due to another period of border tension. The threat of British involvement in the Civil War had soon disappeared as Confederate fortunes had declined. With the end of hostilities, however, large numbers of discharged veteran Union soldiers of Irish birth had become involved in the Fenian movement. Their new goal was independence for their Irish homeland of origin. One scheme to achieve this had come to be the invasion and conquest of British Canada as a blow against the British Empire and as a bargaining chip to use among other bargaining chips to gain self-determination for Ireland.

John Boyle O’Reilly got married with Mary Murphy, who was writing for the Young Crusader under the pen name Agnes Smiley. This couple would produce 4 daughters: Mollie, Eliza, Agnes, and Blanid O’Reilly.

Richard Realf, a frequent orator at Grand Army of the Republic reunions, attempted a GAR anthem, “Rally!” (whether this attempt was successful, I will leave for you to judge): US CIVIL WAR RALLY! Inscribed to the ex-soldiers and sailors of the Union armies and navies. O COMRADES, who rose in your grandeur and might, When the land of our love was in danger, And Liberty girdled your loins for the fight As you sprang to protect and avenge her; O, brothers, whose tread, like the thunder of God, Shook city and mountain and valley — Once more the old bugle-notes echo abroad, And once more our country cries, Rally! Not now with the banners of battle unrolled, The steel-fronted ranks standing steady; Not now with the terrible calmness of old, When the guns were unlimbered and ready; Rally! Not now with the heats as when columns were sped For bloodiest taking and giving — But only with Honor for all of our Dead, And Justice for all of our Living. Bring ballots, not bullets — bring spirits that burn With noble and knightly endeavor, To keep our bright harvests of Progress unshorn By a sheaf, of their fullness forever. Bring love that can pardon the sorrowful past, Bring hopes that are broad as our border; But bring the old Manhood which, unto the last, Stood Alp-like for Union and Order! We fought, and we conquered — they fought, and they fell — And Freedom arose in her beauty; HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

But our swords were not edged with the rancors of hell — They were sharpened for Country and Duty. The sternest and swiftest when armies are launched, And the onset of daring is shouted, Are tender as women when wounds should be staunched For the broken and ruined and routed. We cherish no hatreds — our breath is as sweet As the smell of the midsummer clover; When the arms of our foemen were stacked at our feet, That moment our anger was over. Rally!

Wrath softened to pity the instant their cry Took form of alarm and disaster, And we buried our ire in the grave of the Lie Above whose dark corpse we stood Master. Our hurts are as nothing — our gashes and scars Are worn without boastings and shamings: — What have men who have climbed to the steeps of the stars To do with Earth's vauntings and claimings? But the Altars of Righteousness reared on the mounds Where our canonized heroes lie sleeping — Not a stone must be touched while the sun swings his rounds, And our sabres are still in our keeping! From your fields, then, and firesides, from workshops and plow, O, comrades, come forth in your splendor, Recrowning the Victor and Saver whom now Our temples demand as Defender! Fling out the great cry which you flung when the breath Of the cannon blew hot in your faces: — One Banner, one Being, one Freedom, one Faith, For immutable bulwark and basis!

September: Construction activity began for the Palas of Neuschwanstein Castle (then known as “New Hohenschwangau Castle”). King Ludwig II of Bavaria would be able to use the upper floor of this Palas as a provisional accommodation while was visiting the site (and this would be just about the only benefit he would be deriving, as it would turn out during the onset of his madness, from all this work and expense).

280 St. Helenians departed on a ship heading toward South Africa (wave back at us before you drop below the horizon, folks!).

Richard Realf sought a divorce from Catherine Cassidy Realf. HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

1873

This is the period in which Richard Realf began to write such poems as “Christdom,” “Symbolism,” “Little Children,” and “My slain.” Symbolisms. ALL round us lie the awful sacrednesses Of babes and cradles, graves and hoary hairs; Of girlish laughters and of manly cares; Of moaning sighs and passionate caresses; Of infinite ascensions of the soul, And wild hyena-hungers of the flesh; Of cottage virtues and the solemn roll Of populous cities’ thunder, and the fresh, Warm faith of childhood, sweet as mignonette Amid Doubt’s bitter herbage, and the dear Re-glimpses of the early stars which set Down the blue skies of our lost hemisphere, And all the consecrations and delights Woven in the texture of the days and nights. The daily miracle of Life goes on Within our chambers, at the household hearths. In sober duties and in jocund mirths; In all the unquiet hopes and fears that run Out of our hearts along the edges of The terrible abysses; in the calms Of friendship, in the ecstacies of love*, In burial-dirges and in marriage-psalms; In all the far weird voices that we hear; In all the mystic visions we behold; In our souls’ summers when the days are clear; And in our winters when the nights are cold, And in the subtle secrets of our breath, And that Annunciation men call death. O Earth! thou hast not any wind that blows Which is not music: every weed of thine Pressed rightly flows in aromatic wine; And every humble hedgerow flower that grows, And every little brown bird that doth sing, Hath something greater than itself, and bears A living Word to every living thing, Albeit it hold the Message unawares. All shapes and sounds have something which is not Of them: a Spirit broods amid the grass; Vague outlines of the Everlasting Thought Lie in the melting shadows as they pass; The touch of an Eternal Presence thrills The fringes of the sunsets and the hills. For ever, through the world’s material forms, Heaven shoots its immaterial; night and day Apocalyptic intimations stray Across the rifts of matter; viewless arms Lean lovingly toward us from the air; There is a breathing marvel in the sea; The sapphire foreheads of the mountains wear A light within light which ensymbols the Unutterable Beauty and Perfection HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

That, with immeasurable strivings, strives Through bodied form and sensuous indirection To hint into our dull and hardened lives (Poor lives, that can not see nor hear aright!) The bodiless glories which are out of sight. Sometimes (we know not how, nor why, nor whence) The twitter of the swallows’ neath the eaves, The shimmer of the light among the leaves, “Will strike up through the thick roofs of our sense, And show us things which seers and sages saw In the gray earth’s green dawn: something doth stir Like organ-hymns within us, and doth awe Our pulses into listening, and confer Burdens of Being on us; and we ache With weights of Revelation, and our ears Hear voices from the Infinite that take The hushed soul captive, and the saddening years Seem built on pillared joys, and overhead Vast dove-like wings that arch the world are spread. He, by such raptnesses and intuitions, Doth pledge his utmost immortality Unto our mortal insufficiency, Fettered in grossness, that these sensual prisons, Against whose bars we beat so tired wings, Avail not to ward off the clear access Of His high heralds and interpretings; Wherefore, albeit we may not fully guess The meaning of the wonder, let us keep Clean channels for the instincts which respond To the Unutterable Sanctities that sweep Down the far reaches of the strange Beyond, Whose mystery strikes the spirit into fever, And haunts, and hurts, and blesses us for ever. Insufficiency OTHAT some Poet, with awed lips on fire Of the Ineffable Altars, would arise, And with his consecrated songs baptize Our souls in harmony, that we might acquire Insight into the essential heart of Life, Beating with rythmic pulses. There is lost, In the gross echoes of our brawling strife, Music more rare than that which did accost Shakspeare’s Imagination, when it swept Nearest the Infinite. Our spirits are All out of tune; our discords intercept The strains which, like the singing of a star, Stream downward from the Holies, to attest, Beyond our jarring restlessnesses, Rest. I think our ideal aims will still elude Our eager wishes — that we still shall miss The elemental blessedness which is Incorporate somewhere in our humanhood — That still the unsolved riddles of the Sphinx Will vex us with an inward agony — That still within our daily meats and drinks Will lurk an unknown poison, until we Learn more of reverence for the Soul of Man! O friends, I fear we do but desecrate The sanctity of Being — do but fan The cruel fires of slowly-dying Hate, Instead of kindling hero-lives to dare HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

Greatly for Man’s hope against Man’s despair. Our plummets are too short to fathom well The deep things of existence. Unto pride And unto bitterness it is denied To know the sacred temples wherein dwell The oracles and angels. We want first, For the interpretation of the land, Love, whereby Faith, the seer of Truth, is nursed; And Sympathy, by which to understand The faces of our fellows. What we need Is dew on our dry natures — sustenance For the starved spirit — not the outward greed. We lean too much on palpable circumstance, Too little on impalpable souls, to attain God’s morrows for our yesterdays of pain. IV. We want more depth, more sweetness, less reliance On visible forms and ceremonial laws; Less venomous jeering, at the ingrained flaws Which mar our brother’s beauty; less defiance, Less clannish spite, less airy sciolism, Less incense burned at worldly altars, less Chuckling, less supercilious criticism; More warmth, more meekness, and true lowliness, More human moisture in our lives, more smell Of flowers about our gardens, better sense That something worthy and acceptable May lie beyond the walls with which we fence Our isolation round; excluding thus The high ones who would fain have speech of us. It is not by repressions and restraints Men are withheld from imminent damnation, But by the spiritual affiliation Of love with love. Our vehemence acquaints Heaven with our weakness, chiefly. O, we must Lower our proud voices, front less haughtily The inexorable years; learn ampler trust In God’s child, Man, with God’s eternity Standing behind him, before we may quell Our riotous devils strongly, or drown out The conflagrations which are lit of hell; Or, panoplied in wisdom, put to rout The insurrectionary ranks of lies Which hang like murder on our best emprise. VI. Lo, this is Christdom! This same blessed earth, From its clear coronals of the air we breathe, Down to the primal granite underneath Its mountains, hath had very notable birth Out of Judaic insufficiency. But what are we but unbelieving men, Who put not Christ in our philosophy, And only call our brothers bretheren On Sabbaths merely? Tooth for tooth is good, We think on week-days — the old rigor that With literal eye for eye and blood for blood, Through all the centuries striveth to tread flat The immemorial hill from which alone We dare lift steady eyes to the unknown. What shall we say then? — That our brother’s crimes Augur our own diseases ; £hat his hurts Imply our shames; that the same bond engirts Alike the man who lapses and who climbs; HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

That formulas and credos, when divorced From the great spirit of all-pervading ruth.. Leave still the lean and thirsty world athirst For the deep heart and blessedness of truth; — That in the noblest there is something base And in the meanest noble; that behind The sensual darkness of the human face Not to be quenched by any adverse wind, Enough of God’s light flickers for a sign That our best possible is His divine. VIII. Here’s room for poets! Here is ground for seers! — Broad leagues of acres waiting for the seed Whose recompensing sheaves of song shall breed, Within the bosom of the garnering years, Harvests of prodigal plenty. O ye lips, Anointed for the proper utterance Of what things lie in worthy fellowships! O eyes to which the dread significance Of life’s grand mystery is visible! For lack of ye the poor earth perishes — The patient earth, so very beautiful; The comely earth, so clung with noble stress; Aching for God unutterably, and wet With most immortal tears and bloody sweat. MY SLAIN THIS sweet child which hath climbed upon my knee, This amber-haired, four-summered little maid, With her unconscious beauty troubleth me, With her low prattle maketh me afraid. Ah, darling! when you cling and nestle so, You hurt me, tho you do not see me cry, Nor hear the weariness with which I sigh For the dear babe I killed so long ago. I tremble at the touch of your caress; I am not worthy of your innocent faith, I who, with whetted knives of worldliness Did put my own child-heartedness to death — Beside whose grave I pace forever more, Like desolation on a ship-wrecked shore. There is no little child within me now, To sing back to the thrushes, to leap up When June winds kiss me, when an apple bough Laughs into blossom, or a buttercup Plays with the sunshine, or a violet Dances in the glad dew — alas! alas! The meaning of the daisies in the grass I have forgotten; and if my cheeks are wet, It is not with the blitheness of a child, But with the bitter sorrow of sad years. O moaning life with life irreconciled! O backward-looking thought! O pain! O tears! For us there is not any silver sound Of rhythmic wonder springing from the ground. Woe worth the knowledge and the bookish lore Which makes men mummies; weighs out every grain Of that which was miraculous before, And sneers the heart down with the scoffing brain. Woe worth the peering, analytic days That dry the tender juices in the breast, And put the thunders of the Lord to test HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

So that no marvel must be, and no praise, Nor any God except Necessity. What can you give my poor starved life in lieu Of this dead cherub which I slew for ye? Take back your doubtful wisdom, and renew My early foolish freshness of the dunce, Whose simple instinct guessed the heavens at once. ABRAHAM LINCOLN— 1863 IT touches to the quick the spirit of one Who knows what Freedom is; whose eyes have seen The crops thou sowest ripen in the sun; Whose feet have trod the fields wherein men glean The harvests of thy lonely hours, when thou Didst grapple with the Incarnate Insolence Lording the Land with impious pretense, And very bravely on its arrogant brow Didst set thy sealed abhorrence — when he hears The glib invectives which men launch at thee, Beloved of Peoples, crowned in all thy years Nestor of all our chiefs of Liberty, As if thou wert some devil of crafty spell Let loose to lure the unwary unto hell. But thou art wiser; thy clear spiritual sense Threading our tangled darkness, seest how The equilibriums of Omnipotence Poise the big worlds in safety. Disavow And jeer thee as men will, stab, howl, and curse, They can not blur the glory of thy fame, Nor pluck the noble memories of thy name From the glad keeping of the Universe, Quickened with the conjunction of thy Spirit. For lo! thou art Our’s alone — and yet thou art Nature’s, Mankind’s, the Age’s! We inherit Joint treasures from thee; but we stand apart From all the earth in bitter trespasses ’ Gainst thee and thy great throb of tenderness. Nathless, let not our cold ingratitude Make sad the soul within thee: in the years When the full meanings of our brotherhood Roll their high revelations round the spheres, The solemn passion of thy life shall be A wonder and a worship unto all, Whose eyes behold the Apocalyptical Transfiguration of Humanity. Meanwhile, because thy recompense is pain, Weary not thou; invisible lips shall kiss The trouble from thy heart and from thy brain, In all the days of thy self-sacrifice, Thy blessed hurts being still thy amplest wage, Thou Archimedes of Love’s leverage. TO A LADY AFFLICTED WITH DEAFNESS WHY what a sweet and sacred recompense, Dear friend, doth reinforce thy meagre loss! Because, allbeit upon thy outward sense Fainter than naked feet on woodland moss, The blessed sounds of the blessed world do fall, The fine ear of the soul is so intense With its quick nerve, thou apprehendest all The multitudinous voices which arise HDT WHAT? INDEX

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From the singing earth unto the seeing stars — Its low sad minors, its triumphant cries, The lusty shouting of its conquerors, The slaves’ hushed wail, the tender mother’s sighs: Through all, thy listening spiritual instincts hark God luring his poor children from the dark. IN PERIL BECAUSE of the bleak anguish of her cry. When our two natures tore themselves apart, Like a hell-horror crashing through my heart, Wiping God’s stars from out his purple sky, I think I can the better testify Unto the terrible smiting stroke which clave Thro’ the fine fibers of your delicate brain, When, with your lashes trickling drops of rain, For the last time your shivering lips you gave To his, for kisses and for comfortings. O deep, deep woman heart! O coiling pain Of blackened silence, leaden as the grave; O weary stricken dove, O drooping wings, Christ hold thee in thy dark of shudderings. Be strong — be strong! I think that He who held His Son’s soul in his Soul’s Gethsemane, Who smote the royal first-born, and compelled The maddened waters of the moaning sea To crouch in awe at his prophetic knee, And harnessed his own fiery cloud of stars, To march before his chosen humanity — I say I think the sweep of scimetars He will ward off from him who loveth thee. O many limbs must yawn with ghastly scars Before a godless hand may ever touch This Moses of an Israel that is free. Therefore — O trembler! grieve not overmuch For him who yet shall clasp thee tenderly. LOVE’S MARVEL I THINK that Love makes all things musical, As, melted in the marvels of its breaths, Our barren lives to blossoming lyrics swell, And the new births shine upward from old deaths, Witching the world with wonder. Thus to-day- Watching the crowding people in the street, I thought the ebbing and the flowing feet Moved to a delicate sense of rhythm alway, And that I heard the yearning faces say, “Soul, sing me this new song!” The Autumn leaves Throbbed subtly to me an immortal tune; And when a warm shower wet the roofs at noon, Low melodies seemed to slide down from the eaves, Dying delicious in a dreamy swoon. VIOLA’S SONG DO you remember how, a day ago, You broke into a mellow Tuscan hymn? And how your spirit’s passionate overflow, In waves of living jubilance did grow And greaten all around you, till the dim And shadowy parlor trembled to and fro HDT WHAT? INDEX

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With shining splendors, as though the cherubim Waved their white wings above it? O, dear tones Of that rare singing! O, the subtle voice Which shook me to the marrow of my bones, And clenched and held me till I had no choice Save in bowed reverence to follow it Along its starry pathway — thrilled and lit With radiance of far incandescent thrones.

DECORATION DAY THANK God for Liberty’s dear slain; they give Perpetual consecration unto it, Quick’ning the clay of our insensitive Dull natures with the awe of infinite,. Sun-crowned transfiguration, such as fit On the solemn-brooding mountains. O, the dead, How they do shame the living; how they warn Our little lives that huckster for the bread Of peace, and tremble at the world’s poor scorn, To pick their steps among the flowers, and tread Daintily soft where the raised idols are, Prone with gross dalliance where the feasts are spread, When most they should strive forth, and flash afar Light, like the streaming of heroic war. PATIENCE THE swift years bring but slow development Of the worlds majestic; for Freedom is Born grandly orb’d, as a solid continent, Layer upon layer, from chaos and the abyss, Shoulders its awful granite to the light, Building the eternal mountains, on whose crests, Pinnacled in the intense sapphire, rests The brooding calmness of the Infinite. But we, whirled round and round in heated gusts Of eager indignation, think to weigh Against God’s patience our gross griefs and lusts Like foolish Jonah before Nineveh (O world-wide symbol of his vanished gourd!) Expostulating gravely with the Lord. PASSION I CLENCH my arms about your neck, until The knuckles of my hands grow white with pain, And my swollen muscles quiver with the strain, And all the pulses of my life stand still. I say I clench so. Ah! you can not tear Yourself away from my immortal grip Of forlorn tenderness and salt despair, And child-like sorrowing after fellowship, And wolf-like hunger of the famishing heart; For not until my sundering fibers crack, And my torn limbs from their wrenched sockets start, O darling, darling! will I yield me back To that lone hell whence, shuddering through and through, HDT WHAT? INDEX

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With one wild tiger-leap I sprang to you. SILENCE STILL BUT do not heed my trembling; do not shrink Because my face is haggard, and my eyes Blaze hot with thirstiness as they would drink Your wells up to their ultimate supplies. I will not hurt you, darling! I will be More tender than our Mothers were to us In our first days of helpless infancy. — And if I kiss you thus, and thus, and thus; And fling toward you — so — and make you wreathe Nigher and nigher, until you can not breathe Save by my sufferance, — I will not wet Your dead white forehead with a single stain (I will watch so) from all the purple rain Of my great agony and bloody sweat. A YEAR AGO A YEAR ago two thin and delicate hands Trembled within my passionate parting clasp, Two dreamy eyes seemed spiritual overmuch, And one white brow my hot lips loved to touch, Burned as if belted by the securing bonds That crown our crowns of sorrow. Then she spoke: “God keep you” — but a sudden shivering gasp Splintered the rest to silence with one stroke. O, t’was well feigned! the exquisite, audible sign, The mute beseeching of the bloodless lips The paleness reaching to the ringer tips, And the deep, mournful splendor of the eye. God! but her rare skill smote me as a cry Of those who perish amid sinking ships. Now, let this pass! O, woman, there shall come In the deep midnights, when thy pulses throb, And something startles thee like a low sob, A shining grandeur that shall strike thee dumb — The glory of a great white martyrdom! And nothing save the old clock on the wall, Whose strokes shall crash like awful thunder then, Shall answer thee when thou shalt wildly call On the strange past to speak to thee again With one voice more! but thou shalt grope and crawl Along wet burial crypts, and thy large tears, Scorched with the heat of thy strong agony, Shall blister on the dead hopes of old years, Who shall rise up to glare and mock at thee. David Swing FOR souls like thine, coined of creative fire, Electric with quick instincts — it is hard To endure the fool, the Pharisee, the liar, The scoffs and jeers of little lives on guard Against the lifting Savior; terrible To tread most sovran indignation down With still more sovran pity — to annul The wrong as though it were not, and to crown Man-hating with Christ-loving; bitter as death To keep calm lips closed over burning breath, And make the clenched fist reverence the will HDT WHAT? INDEX

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That holds the tingling fibers in restraint. Yet only through such pain may we fulfil The measure of the hero and the saint. Truth’s self is Truth’s own triumph and success. Therefore wait thou: Whoso hath eyes to see The marvel of his everlastingness. Rooted in God’s immutability; He whose true soul is reverent and wise To read the lesson of the Universe, That not in crowd nor ritualities, Nor the proud pomps with which men bless and Curse, Lie liberty and mastery, but alone In that ineffable Christ whom we disown, Needeth no human succor — for he is Girt all about with the Invisible. Wherefore, albeit thine enemies howl and hiss, Remain thou silent, till thine hour is full. Until thine hour is full. For there shall come A moment when, with clarified, soft eyes, Men shall behold thy stature, and stand dumb, Stricken with large and beautiful surprise. But this is not thy glory; the broad gaze Of seeing natures, the sweet sobs and shouts Of glad, freed thralls who in new-throbbing praise Do penance for the evil of old doubts — The home in good men’s hearts, the wider faith, The benedictions poured along thy path, The prayers that run like couriers at thy side, The dear beliefs of childhood’s innocence — These are as naught: that thou hast justified Thy soul with love, is thy soul’s recompense. IN A SCRAP BOOK HERE, gathered from all places and all time, The waifs of wisdom and of folly meet. High thoughts that awe and lilting words that chime Like Sabbath bells heard in far vallies sweet; Quaint fancies, musical with dainty rhyme Like the soft patter of an infant’s feet; And laughter radiant as summer skies, The genial sunshine of the happy heart; And giant hopes looking out from human eyes, With thrilling hymns that make the quick tears start, Are here, in garlands of strange fantasy, To catch the careless passer’s casual look, And show, within the limits of a book, Unto him his life’s own large epitome. TO AN ENGLISH FRIEND STAND still, and let me read thee as thou art! O, like a spiritual hearted child, who stands Watching a dying sunset by the sea, When blazing awe hath stricken his lips apart, And crept, like thunder, through the clenched hands With which he clutched at that God’s prophecy, And missed it: so stands shivering on the sands, Staring his reddened eyes into the night, Straining his splintered heartstrings till he dies — So does the hunger of his famishing eyes Glare toward the line of overwhelming light That stunned thee into speechlessness; and yet HDT WHAT? INDEX

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It stands and waits in the eternities, To clasp thee sudden when thy cheeks are wet. TO MRS. M, OF ENGLAND On the birth of her first child WHEN you lay shivering with the great excess Of mother-marvel at your child’s first cry; When you looked up and saw him standing by, Leaning the strong unspeakable utterness Of all his soul upon you; when you smiled, And your weak lips strove mightily to frame To a new song your new life’s oriflamme, And presently the infinite words, “Our child,” Made a most musical murmur, as of breath Breathed by a poet’s spirit — did you know The babe’s slight moan, that seemed so faint and low, Was God’s voice speaking from dear Nazareth, Covering you up with that white light that lay On Mary and her young Christ in the hay? TO A LADY ON CHIDING ME FOR NOT WRITING IF still I hold my peace, and stand aloof From giving thee tongue-worship, it is not Because my nature hath grown passion proof: In truth I think my heart’s blood is as hot As when, foreseeing my spirit would else rot, Heaven purged me with hell’s sulphur; only now, Leaning here, with my sword drawn, on my shield, Ribbed with the strokes of battle’s deadliest hate, I have no leisure to unbend my brow Into the mood of sonnets! Ay, and thou — Though the deep song be nevermore revealed, And thine own anthem perish uncreate — Wilt deem me manlier that I do not yield The stern hour unto music: therefore, wait! Wait! it is better so. Some day, perhaps, The Word within may find an utterance. Only not now while God’s great thunder-claps And still small voices of vast covenants Are talking with my soul. I must be dumb When Heaven speaks, and my hungry eyes do glance Into the deeps of Being, tho’ my heart Break with its bursting silence. — O, dear friend, I surely trust the Pentecost will come, When these mute yearnings of my life shall start Into a living lyric, that shall blend Music with all my pulses, and ascend Calmly and purely the celestial hope — A belt of fire across my horoscope. THE TRUTH THE great world grows in glory; near and far God’s blinding splendors blaze upon our eyes; And thunders, as of newer Sinais, Crash triple grandeurs of deep prophecies; And large loves, white as Christ’s own Angels are, Fling shining sweetnesses on all the spheres; And calm vast hymns, high as the morning star, Throb throneward from the green isles of the seas. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Yea, all the days are as a Mother’s tears — Brimfull with unsaid meanings. Therefore now I will stretch forth my yearning hands to seize The luminous Truth, which, girdled on my brow, Shall fringe my soul with naming sanctities, The early promise of an ancient vow. TO MISS H B- I HAVE been homeless such a weary while; Have lived so long upon Love’s scattered crumbs, Strewn in the outer alleys of the world; My naked heart has been so dashed and whirled From side to side in bitter martyrdoms, Made all the bitterer by the lean, sad smile Shivering upon my lips, that this new feast Whereto I am bidden as chief banqueter, And whereat, though my speech be of the least, I may bend on her my great, greedy eyes, Walk by her side, a reverent listener — Silent, ’till all my own soul’s silences Burst into blossoming music: ’tis too deep, Too very blessed! Heart — be still and weep. I held her name between me and the sun And then I staggered downward to my knees; O, blessed Christ! how my brain reeled and spun When, like a flash from the Eternities, The blinding blaze of burning glory clung Around the luminous letters, till the name Shot outward into breathing life, a flame With Godlike splendor, as a cloven tongue Of awful Pentecost! O Holiest Of all the holy! O, great Infinite Who thro’ all works still workest all things best; I yield this name unto thee; pure and white Keep it, dear Father! Keep it in Thy sight — Keep it for me when my soul can not rest. IN NOTRE DAME THEY look down from their places on the wall With such transfigurings in their steadfast eyes, You see a sweet ascending glory rise About their foreheads apostolical, And hear such wondrous spiritual replies From those meek lips of patient sorrow fall, You kneel down in the light that glorifies The aisles of silent worshipers, and thrill Beneath the anointed, soothing hand that lies On the moaning surge of your dark agonies Born of the lapses of the heart and will From God’s high levels to man’s low tracts of ill; And pass forth quivering with the soft surprise That touched you in the whisper, “Peace, be still.” TO THADDEUS HYATT WHEN God spake unto Moses, and the crags Of Sinai shook with thunder, do you think The gaping Jews upon the river brink, Stripping the tinsel from their priestly rags To build them yellow idols, ever caught HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1 Mid the loud tumult of their mummeries, The slightest whisper of the Eternal Thought? So, do you think that those who fret and fume, Tossed round and round in a great whirl of lies Can catch the meaning lying in your eyes, Or mark the colors of the mystic bloom Whose silent growth is as a rose of fire; Or through the rifts of dark, and mist, and gloom, See Godlike Love beneath your manly ire? NANNIE’S PICTURE CHILD-INSTINCT of the Holy mingles here, With the fine painter-cunning: heart and eye All steeped in seeing of the mystic sky Which broods above the enchanted wondersphere The little children walk in. Else, whence came The aromatic effluence that grows, Dear as first fragrance of a dawning rose, Out from the canvas — and the subtle flame Wreathing the dainty baby-brows with light Clothed with revealings of the Infinite — Making us part revering lips to bless The winsome face we look on, and pass forth, Watching the beatific Sun caress The people swarming on the happy earth? TO R. J. H. 1 MARKED fine crownings of a Crowning Hand Flush on his brooding brows: and, catching so The inward radiance through the outward glow, I know that very tranquil, deep and grand, Waited a power within him to withstand All luring shows of things that were not based On firmamental pillars. Then I said I thank God reverently that amid this Loud whirl of eager faction He hath placed A far-eyed seer, calm-poised of heart and head — A lithe-thewed Titan with winged faiths that kiss The crests of difficult peaks, and tread the paths Where the clear-sighted walk by the abyss Close to diviner loves and holier wraths.

February 14, Friday: Richard Realf obtained his divorce from Catherine Cassidy Realf. She was ordered to pay the court costs. The decree was described as absolute.

Summer: Early during this summer,Richard Realf went back home to Buxton, England to visit his parents. On his return to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania he would be surprised by news that during his absence his divorce decree had been appealed to the state Supreme Court and there reversed — that Mrs. Catherine Cassidy Realf was still seriously pursuing him for support money: We do not rightly seize the type of Socrates if we can ever forget he was the husband of Xantippe, nor of David if we can only think of him as the murderer of Uriah, nor Peter if we can simply remember that he denied the Master. Our vision is only blindness if we can never bring ourselves to see the possibilities of deep mystic aspirations behind the outer life HDT WHAT? INDEX

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of a man.

On Penikese,25 the farthest of the Elizabeth Islands below Cape Cod, an island donated by the wealthy New York tobacconist John Anderson,26 Professor Louis Agassiz, just back from a journey to California sailing around Cape Horn, offered an “Anderson School of Natural History.” His lecture room was a large barn that had been cleaned out for the occasion. There were some fifty students. A schooner yacht, the Sprite, donated to the school by a Mr. Galloupe of Boston, was used in dredging for specimens to examine in this barn:

25. The farthest offshore, Penikese, is about half a square mile. The first recorded landing by Europeans was in May 1602, by Bartholomew Gosnold, at which time the island was wooded. The only trees left after the island’s clearing for pasture are a few patches of scrub oak. Most of this island had become grassland sprinkled with glacial rock when in 1867 Anderson bought the place evidently because he had more money than he knew what to do with. Around the turn of the 20th Century, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts took title with a plan to use the island as an isolation unit for smallpox patients, to replace that smallpox isolation hospital on Pine Island in Boston Harbor that had been destroyed by fire in 1872. Then in 1905 the island became an isolation colony for the approximately 20 persons in Massachusetts who were victims of leprosy. For one reason or another only five of these 20 ever came to Penikese. The patients were initially looked after by Dr. Louis Edmonds of Barnstable, and beginning in 1907 by Dr. Frank Parker and Mrs. Parker. One of the more notable patients was 16 years of age, Archie Thomas and his mother insisted on coming with him, this creating a sensation. Archie set up a wireless and was able to communicate with people off the island. In 1912 the home of Dr. and Mrs. Parker burned and many of the island’s records were lost. By 1921 the treatment of leprosy had advanced and the six patients remaining were relocated to a federal leprosarium in Louisiana. The Parkers moved to Montana and retired while the state burned and dynamited all buildings on the island with the understanding that this would kill off the leprosy germs. The State continued to hold ownership, and 1942 the island would be designated a bird sanctuary. In Summer 1973 George Cadwalader and some of his friends would establish a residential school for troubled boys between the ages of 13 and 18. A culprit would be sometimes given the choice to come to Penikese or serve hard time in a Massachusetts prison, but the Penikese School for Delinquent Youths would not acquire any sort of good track record for turning lives around. 26. No relation to John Anderson the escaped American slave. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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The Prayer of Agassiz by John Greenleaf Whittier

ON the isle of Penikese, Ringed about by sapphire seas, Fanned by breezes salt and cool, Stood the Master with his school. Over sails that not in vain Wooed the west-wind’s steady strain, Line of coast that low and far Stretched its undulating bar, Wings aslant across the rim Of the waves they stooped to skim, Rock and isle and glistening bay, Fell the beautiful white day. Said the Master to the youth : “We have come in search of truth, Trying with uncertain key Door by door of mystery ; We are reaching, through His laws, To the garment-hem of Cause, Him, the endless, unbegun, The Unnamable, the One Light of all our light the Source Life of life, and Force of force. As with fingers of the blind, We are groping here to find What the hieroglyphics mean Of the Unseen in the seen, What the Thought which underlies Nature’s masking and disguise, What it is that hides beneath Blight and bloom and birth and death. By past efforts unavailing, Doubt and error, loss and failing, Of our weakness made aware, On the threshold of our task Let us light and guidance ask, Let us pause in silent prayer !” Then the Master in his place Bowed his head a little space, And the leaves by soft airs stirred, Lapse of wave and cry of bird, Left the solemn hush unbroken Of that wordless prayer unspoken, While its wish, on earth unsaid, Rose to heaven interpreted. As, in life’s best hours, we hear By the spirit’s finer ear His low voice within us, thus The All-Father heareth us ; And His holy ear we pain With our noisy words and vain. Not for Him our violence Storming at the gates of sense, His the primal language, His The eternal silences ! Even the careless heart was moved, HDT WHAT? INDEX

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And the doubting gave assent, With a gesture reverent, To the Master well-beloved. As thin mists are glorified By the light they cannot hide, All who gazed upon him saw, Through its veil of tender awe, How his face was still uplift By the old sweet look of it, Hopeful, trustful, full of cheer, And the love that casts out fear. Who the secret may declare Of that brief, unuttered prayer ? Did the shade before him come Of th’ inevitable doom, Of the end of earth so near, And Eternity’s new year ? In the lap of sheltering seas Rests the isle of Penikese ; But the lord of the domain Comes not to his own again : Where the eyes that follow fail, On a vaster sea his sail Drifts beyond our beck and hail. Other lips within its bound Shall the laws of life expound ; Other eyes from rock and shell Read the world’s old riddles well : But when breezes light and bland Blow from Summer’s blossomed land, WHen the air is glad with wings, And the blithe song-sparrow sings, Many an eye with his still face Shall the living one displace, Many an ear the word shall seek He alone could fitly speak. And one name forevermore Shall be uttered o’er and o’er By the waves that kiss the shore, By the curlew’s whistle sent Down the cool, sea-scented air ; In all voices known to her, Nature owns her worshipper, Half in triumph, half lament. Thither Love shall tearful turn, Friendship pause uncovered there, And the wisest reverence learn From the Master’s silent prayer. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1875

March 24, Wednesday: Abby May Alcott, the “artistic” daughter of the Alcott family, had been solicited and had suggested a local young man, Daniel Chester French, she considered to be of promise;

he had produced a minute plaster model on the model of the Apollo Belvedere (with clothes on);27 a bronze statue was in the last stages of being prepared;28 the base and inscription for the new statue of the “Minute Man” on the west bank of the Concord River at the Old North Bridge in Concord were complete.

Richard Realf was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to Miss Eliza Ann “Lizzie” Whapham with Richard Realf (they having entered into a common-law union).

27. The Roman copy known as the Apollo Belvedere, at the Vatican, was termed in 1775 “the consummation of the best that nature, art, and the human mind can produce.” It had been uncovered sometime late in the 15th Century, and dates to the reign of Hadrian. We presume that the original of this had been sculpted about 320BCE by Leochares, an Athenian, at the court of Alexander the Great. Thomas Carlyle dealt with the Apollo Belvedere in “Hudson’s Statue.” 28. The plan had been, originally, for a marble statue, but young Daniel the sculptor had preferred bronze and Judge Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar had persuaded the US Congress to make available 10 condemned Civil War brass cannon. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1876

At this point Richard Realf was no longer editing and writing for the Pittsburgh newspaper that had hired him in 1870, in part because it had merged with another newspaper, in part because the heroism of the Civil War was long over, in part because his newspaper poetry was unreadable, and in part because his patron had deceased.

The United States Marine Corps began at this point to carry the Stars-and-Stripes into battle, rather than the regimental colors (the United States cavalry would follow suit 11 years later), because they considered the national flag necessary to remind all the recent immigrants who made up the bulk of the rank and file the United States military, what it was they supposedly were fighting for.

Winter/Spring: Richard Realf had been injured in a railway collision. He became so ill as to become almost completely blind (apparently he picked up this eye infection from his son Richard), and spent considerable time confined in the New-York Opthalmic Hospital. Meanwhile Miss Eliza Ann “Lizzie” Whapham, mother of his young son Richard Realf, was being cared for at the Homeopathic Hospital on Ward’s Island. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1877

January: After looking for a place to live along the Gulf Coast, Jefferson Davis accepted an invitation to stay with the rich widow Sarah Anne Ellis Dorsey at “Beauvoir” near Biloxi, Mississippi, and there began to accumulate data for his memoirs (considering her gentleman lodger “the highest and noblest in existence,” she would will to him her estate).

This gentleman lodger was definitely not an outdoorsy person, not a nature-lover, so it is unlikely that he perused, in this month’s Scribner’s Monthly, an article by Joel Benton on “John Burroughs,” an outdoorsy nature-lover who “has won the well-recognized position, which no one has held so well since Thoreau’s death, of our Prophet of Outdoordom.” It is unlikely that Davis learned that “Like Thoreau, he can be happy walking through a swamp in the snow-porridge and desolation of a winter night, and find more rapture than most of us extract from a perfect morning in June.” It is unlikely that Davis learned that “As Thoreau when some one on a walk asked him for an Indian’s arrow immediately stooped down and picked one up, so [John Burroughs’s] visual sense seems to respond to every interrogation the spirit prompts.”

Early in this year it became clear that, for lack of income due to his troubled eyesight, Richard Realf was not going to be able to satisfy the monetary needs of Mrs. Catherine Cassidy Realf.

May 23, Tuesday: Jefferson Davis sailed for London via Liverpool on an extended business trip, his wife Varina and their daughter Winnie Davis traveling with him while their son Jeff, Jr. remained behind with his sister Margaret Davis Hayes and her new husband Joel Addison Hayes in Memphis, Tennessee (they would enroll Winnie in a school in Karlsruhe, Germany).

Richard Realf wrote “I have suffered excruciating tortures. I never thought I should be so poor, and helpless, and sightless, but it is God’s will; God’s will be done.”

Fall: Richard Realf began to lecture throughout the midwest on “Temperance,” on “Battle Flashes,” on “Public Schools and their Freedom from Sectarian Control,” on “John Brown,” on “Shakespeare,” on “Poetry and Labor,” etc.

An English businessman living in Boston, Herbert Radclyffe (1847-1900), donated posts and chains to enclose the grave of the two Army soldiers at the Old North Bridge. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1878

In the state of New York, birth of triplet daughters Mabel, Minnie, and Alice to Miss Eliza Ann “Lizzie” Whapham and Richard Realf (who had entered into a common-law union). Soon, fortunately, the triplets would be adopted by a lady of means.

A building was erected at Charlotte, New York to house life-saving crews.

A contractor for the Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburgh (State Line) Railway hurried through a track-crossing- track project before he could be halted by the crews of the established Erie and Central Railroad, in Le Roy, New York. The line reached Pavilion.

Rochester, New York’s Vacuum Oil Company, drilling in Middlebury, struck salt on the Hayden farm, founding a local industry.

A replica of a pioneer cabin was erected on the grounds of the Silver Lake Assembly.

Michigan physician and nutritionist Dr. John Harvey Kellogg traveled to Dansville, New York to study the methods used at the Jackson Health Resort.

The U. S. Post Office in Corning, New York took in $719,414 in stamp purchases and sells 2,161 moneyorders worth a total of $17,631.06.

In Syracuse, New York, construction began on Joseph Lyman Silsbee’s Dutch Reformed Church.

In Albany, New York the Prospect Hill Pumping Station reached a capacity of 10,000,000 gallons of water per day.

In Rochester, New York a couple of Italian men were fined $50 apiece for having allowed the child of one to play in the saloon band of the other.

In Rochester, New York George Eastman began manufacturing the photographic dry plate. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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July 1, Monday: The agreed-upon deadline for completion of Jefferson Davis’s memoir THE RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT came and went. Although Walthall was able to persuade the publishing firm Appleton’s to extend its deadline to January 1st, they would in actuality receive no copy until mid-1880. CIVIL WAR

Trying for a fresh start as so many do, Richard Realf would soon arrive in San Francisco, California. At the age of 46 his hair had turned almost white. Soon a friend would take him to a beautiful ranch in the Napa Valley for rest and recuperation. Then a job would be found for him in San Francisco, doing hard and dangerous labor in the melting and coining room of the US Mint.

October 26, Saturday: Catherine Cassidy Realf arrived in San Francisco, California. Learning where her husband Richard Realf lived, she went there and persuaded the landlady to grant her entrance. When he returned home from work that evening, in a fury of righteousness she was going through his stuff, hunting out items that might be of value. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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October 28, Monday: Richard Realf had undergone a couple of years of hardship while being pursued by Catherine Cassidy Realf for support money he had no way to render, and had returned to New-York City to give lectures and offer his poetry. Becoming ill, he had borrowed money to travel to San Francisco, California. Having secured a decent job in the melting and coining room at the government mint there, a dangerous and difficult job paying something like $60/month, he was hoping to be able to bring across the continent his common-law wife Miss Eliza Ann “Lizzie” Whapham and their 4-year-old Richard Realf (the triplet daughters having been adopted by a lady in New York).

Several nights earlier than this, however, upon returning from work to his lodgings, he had found Catherine going through his belongings. Purchasing a bottle of laudanum at a chemist’s, he had taken a room at the Windsor House in Oakland. Obtaining some scraps of note paper he wrote his swan song, the final couple of verses of which were as follows: But say that he succeeded. If he missed World’s honors and world’s plaudits and the wage Of the world’s deft lacqueys, still his lips were kissed Daily by those high angels who assuage The thirstings of the poets; for he was Born unto singing — and a burthen lay Mightily on him, and he moaned because He could not rightly utter to the day What God taught in the night. Sometimes, nathless, Power fell upon him, and bright tongues of flame, And blessings reached him from poor souls in stress: And benedictions from black pits of shame, And little children’s love. and old men’s prayers, And a Great Hand that led him unawares. So he died rich. And if his eyes were blurred With big films — silence — he is in his grave. Greatly he suffered; greatly, too, he erred, Yet broke his heart in trying to be brave. Nor did he wait till Freedom had become The popular shibboleth of courtier’s lips: He smote for her when God himself seemed dumb And all His arching skies were in eclipse. He was a-weary, but he fought his fight And stood for simple manhood; and was joyed To see the august broadening of the light. And new earths heaving heav’nward from the void. He loved his fellows, and their love was sweet— HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Plant daisies at his head and at his feet.

On the previous evening, having dashed off the above, he had attempted suicide but had returned to consciousness. During this day, however, by taking chloral/chloral hydrate in combination with the laudanum, he did succeed in offing himself. With the poem was found a letter to his friend Colonel Richard Josiah Hinton, designated as his literary executor, with instructions: “On no account is the person calling herself my wife to be permitted to approach my remains. I should quiver with horror, even in my death, at her touch.… I have had heavy burdens to bear, such as have sent stronger men than I reeling into hell. I have tried to bear them like a man, but can endure no more.” The remains would be deposited in Lone Mountain Cemetery in San Francisco. The corpse wore a bracelet of the yellow hair of Miss Noel. After an initial gathering of the poet’s scattered fragments by Ina Coolbrith, Colonel Hinton would in 1888 complete the collection of Realf’s poems for publication, and accompany them with a biographical sketch.

November: After the suicide and funeral and burial of Richard Realf in Lone Mountain Cemetery in San Francisco (later to be known as Laurel Hill Cemetery), Mrs. Catherine Cassidy Realf remained in San Francisco for about a month averring destitution, and attempting to vend items such as his poems and manuscripts. One friend offered her $100 for every last thing but then, of course, she didn’t hand over every last thing — that just wasn’t the type of girl this girl was. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1879

January: The beginning of serial publication of Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoevski’s THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV in The Russian Herald: “From the Author,” Books I, II (Scandalous scene at the monastery. Fedor and Ivan leave.)

Professor Friedrich Nietzsche’s illness worsened.

Two poems by Richard Realf appeared in The Century Magazine: –––— AN EPITAPH. This poet was very wealthy. If he missed Worlds’ honors, and worlds’ plaudits, and the wage Of the worlds’ deft lackeys, still his lips were kissed Daily by those high angels who assuage The thirstings of the seers. For he was Born unto singing, and a burthen lay Mightily on him, and he moaned because He could not rightly utter to the day What God taught in the night. Yet oft would fall Swift Power upon him, and winged tongues of flame; And blessings reached him from poor souls in thrall. And benedictions from black pits of shame. And little children’s loves, and old men’s prayers, And a Great Hand that led him unawares. –––— INTERPRETATION. A Dreaming Poet lay upon the ground. He plucked the grasses with his listless hands. No voice was near him save the wishful sound Of the sea cooing to the unbosomed sands.

He leaned his heart upon the naked sod. He heard the audible pulse of nature beat. He trembled greatly at the Word of God Spoken in the rushes rustling at his feet. With inward vision his outward sight grew dim, He knew the rhythmic secret of the spheres, HDT WHAT? INDEX

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He caught the cadence, and a noble hymn, Swam swan-like in upon the gliding years.

March: Continuation of serial publication of Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoevski’s THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV in The Russian Herald: Book III (Alesha returns to the monastery. Liza’s letter.)

Workers reopening an entrance to an Ellenville lead mine discovered the bones of David M. Smith, a telegrapher for the local D&H Canal office, who had mysteriously disappeared 13 years previously.

An engraved portrait of Richard Realf, and his signature, accompanied an article about the poet by Rossiter Johnson in Lippincott’s Magazine.

The engraving was made from a photo taken by Thomas W. Heatley of Wyandotte, Kansas and Mrs. Ida E. Peacock would then use this magazine engraving as the basis for a large crayon portrait of the poet. This crayon portrait would be donated to the Kansas State Historical Society. In the autumn of 1867 a series of remarkable poems appeared in the Rochester (New York) Union. They were all dated at Rochester, and signed “R.R.,” and were so utterly above and beyond all newspaper and most magazine poetry that as they appeared day after day I read them with amazement. Perhaps also with a touch a touch of jealousy, for at that time I had the pleasure of being Robert Carter’s assistant in editing the Rochester Democrat, and we never had the good luck to have any such poems sent to us. At the time the series included “Remembering and Waiting,” which bore such a close resemblance to “An Old Man’s Idyl,” published in the Atlantic for March, 1866, that nobody who had read both could fail to observe it. Some one, unknown to me, immediately published a note to the editors, calling it a case of plagiarism. This brought out R.R. with an explanation over his full signature, and Richard Realf stood confessed. “Remembering and Waiting” was a recast of “An Old Man’s Idyl,” and not am improvement upon it. Who, then, was Richard Realf? HDT WHAT? INDEX

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February 10, Thursday: Les contes d’Hoffmann, an opéra-fantastique by Jacques Offenbach to words of Barbier completed by Guiraud, was performed for the initial time, at the Opéra-Comique, Paris.

El bien público of Havana included the 1st notice of Isaac Albéniz as a conductor, in the Círculo Español.

The Delaware County Daily Times of Chester reported that a declaration had been filed in a libel suit in Philadelphia’s Court of Common Pleas, Number 2, by Mrs. Catharine C. Realf, widow of Richard Realf, against the publishing house of J.B. Lippincott & Co. They had published a biographical sketch of the poet written by Rossiter Johnson, in their March 1879 issue, which plaintiff considered libelous. Plaintiff asserted that this issue of this publication had done $20,000 worth of injury to her good name, fame, and credit by bringing her into public scandal, infamy, and disgrace. The alleged libelous portions of this biographical sketch of which Mrs. Realf was complaining were mangled and truncated by this Pennsylvania gazette more or less as follows: He (meaning Richard Realf, the husband of said plaintiff) was an English peasant. Born near Brighton, Sussex, in June, 1834 — born to forty-four years of the direst poverty and the darkest tragedy; born to be the pet and protege of the wealthy and noble and to make himself the champion of the poor and outcast; born to fly from the moral thralldom of castes in his native land to fight for civil liberty in a country not bis own — to see the clear vision that is never delineated and dream the dreams that cannot be interpreted; and made to go down to death in midmanhood because a narrow construction of the laws he had bled to maintain had decreed him a hideous noyade bound to a loathsome carcass. (Meaning said plaintiff.) He next turned up in Rochester in 1867, where be made the misstep or met the misfortune which gave his remaining years to misery and ultimately sent him to the grave. Somehow, it is difficult if not impossible to say, how he became married to a woman of the town. The explanation mist favorable to her is, that she nursed him through a critical illness, and that from gratitude and a hope of reforming her he made her his wife. He himself declared in a letter to me that he believed his mind was obscured at the time, the effect of losses and personal grief, so that he did not know what he was about. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1881

May 6, Friday: Five months after killing the entire male population of the Turkoman city of Dengil-Tepe, the Russian Empire created a new Transcaucasian province.

Richard Realf, father of the poet Richard Realf, died in Buxted, Sussex at the age of 76 years.

May 10, Tuesday: The body of Richard Realf, father of the poet Richard Realf, was interred at St. Margaret’s Church in Buxted, Sussex.

Jubelfest-Marsch op.396 by Johann Strauss was performed for the initial time, in Theater an der Wien, Vienna.

Mam’zelle Moucheron, an opérette-bouffe by Jacques Offenbach to words of Leterrier and Vanloo, was performed for the initial time, at the Théâtre de la Renaissance, Paris. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1882

October: Bronson Alcott was attacked by a paralysis.

Sophie Emery Graves Realf died at Merrivale, Indiana. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1887

January 19, Wednesday: Martha Highlands Realf, mother of the poet Richard Realf, died in Buxted, Sussex.

January 25, Tuesday: The body of Martha Highlands Realf, mother of the poet Richard Realf, was interred at St. Margaret’s Church in Buxted, Sussex. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1888

Richard Realf. POEMS, WITH A MEMORIAL BY R.J. HINTON. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1898

Richard Realf. POEMS, WITH A MEMORIAL BY R.J. HINTON (new edition). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1901

Richard Realf. FREE-STATE POEMS: EDITED BY R.J. HINTON (Topeka). KANSAS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1926

Miss Eliza Ann “Lizzie” Whapham died in the United States. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1934

Capitalizing on the idea that anybody who was just as hard on himself as he was on others is likely to have been some kinda saint, cause for beatification was begun in the case of Father Junípero Serra, now understood to have been the Apostle of California.29

In a related piece of news, the casket of Joshua Abraham Norton, the Emperor Norton, was removed from the Masonic Cemetery to Woodlawn Cemetery when San Francisco’s boundaries overran the old cemetery. A new granite monument bears an appropriate inscription:

(The gent standing in respectful silence in the T-shirt of emperor yellow is a modern day-wannabee.)

When Laurel Hill Cemetery had been dedicated in 1854, it was supposed that the corpses there interred would there rest in perpetuity. However, at this point property values intruded. To construct a community to be known as “Laurel Village,” some 47,000 graves were removed to points outside of the city of San Francisco. The caskets pertaining to war veterans were placed in the National Military Cemetery at the US Army Presidio, at the southern entrance to the Golden Gate Bridge. The casket of Richard Realf, Civil War veteran, was one of those so relocated. It was identified by an inscription that described him as “an officer (Colonel) of the 30th U.S. Colored Infantry.” It was positioned in Section OSA, Row 72, Grave #4.

29. Over the dead bodies, so to speak, of the natives he used to flog so mercilessly at Mission San Juan Capistrano. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Robert Frost included WALDEN among his 10 favorites, right after THE ODYSSEY and ROBINSON CRUSOE: WALDEN has something of the same fascination. Crusoe was cast away; Thoreau was self-cast away. Both found themselves sufficient. No prose writer has ever been more fortunate in subject than these two. I prefer my essay in narrative form. In WALDEN I get it and always near the height of poetry. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1950

August 26, Saturday: Composizione no.2 for orchestra by Bruno Maderna was performed for the initial time, in Darmstadt.

A group of 8 former Nazi leaders, along with several other important political and business leaders, was released from Landsberg Prison in München, Germany. “Go thou and sin no more.” WORLD WAR II

Richard Realf (son) died in Summit, New Jersey.

A public statement on US foreign policy by General Douglas MacArthur, not cleared by the State Department, Defense Department, or the White House, was ordered withdrawn by President Harry S Truman. This caused a furor among opponents of the President. KOREAN WAR HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1971

August 25, Wednesday: Minnie Whapham (daughter) died in Atlantic Highland, Middletown, Monmouth, New Jersey. The body would be placed in the Presbyterian Cemetery at New Providence, New Jersey.

COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others, such as extensive quotations and reproductions of images, this “read-only” computer file contains a great deal of special work product of Austin Meredith, copyright 2016. Access to these interim materials will eventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup some of the costs of preparation. My hypercontext button invention which, instead of creating a hypertext leap through hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems— allows for an utter alteration of the context within which one is experiencing a specific content already being viewed, is claimed as proprietary to Austin Meredith — and therefore freely available for use by all. Limited permission to copy such files, or any material from such files, must be obtained in advance in writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Please contact the project at .

“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.” – Remark by character “Garin Stevens” in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST

Prepared: November 2, 2016 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT

GENERATION HOTLINE

This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by a human. Such is not the case. Instead, someone has requested that we pull it out of the hat of a pirate who has grown out of the shoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (as above). What these chronological lists are: they are research reports compiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of modules which we term the Kouroo Contexture (this is data mining). To respond to such a HDT WHAT? INDEX

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request for information we merely push a button.

Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obvious deficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored in the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then we need to punch that button again and recompile the chronology — but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary “writerly” process you know and love. As the contents of this originating contexture improve, and as the programming improves, and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whatever has been needed in the creation of this facility, the entire operation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminished need to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expect to achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring robotic research librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world.

First come first serve. There is no charge. Place requests with . Arrgh.